Subject: [PATCH v2] doc: clarify the filename encoding in git diff

From: "Andrey Bienkowski via GitGitGadget" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2021 11:24:37 +0000

From: Andrey Bienkowski <[email-masked]>

AFAICT parsing the output of `git diff --name-only master...feature`
is the intended way of programmatically getting the list of files
modified
by a feature branch. It is impossible to parse text unless you know what
encoding it is in. The output encoding of diff --name-only and
diff --name-status was not documented.

I asked on the mailing list and got this:
https://public-inbox.org/git/[email-masked]/
> There's some discussion in Documentation/i18n.txt, which is included
in
various manpages (e.g., https://git-scm.com/docs/git-log#_discussion)
but it doesn't seem to be mentioned in git-diff.
The short answer is: mostly utf8, but historically on platforms that
don't care (like Linux) you could get away with other encodings.
-Peff

My takeaway was to always parse it as utf8 regardless of platform or
environment.

Signed-off-by: Andrey Bienkowski <[email-masked]>
---
    doc: clarify the filename encoding in git diff --name-only and
    --name-status
    
    AFAICT parsing the output of git diff --name-only master...feature is
    the intended way of programmatically getting the list of files modified
    by a feature branch. It is impossible to parse text unless you know what
    encoding it is in. The output encoding of diff --name-only and diff
    --name-status was not documented.
    
    I asked on the mailing list and got this:
    https://public-inbox.org/git/[email-masked]/
    
    > There's some discussion in Documentation/i18n.txt, which is included
    > in various manpages (e.g.,
    > https://git-scm.com/docs/git-log#_discussion) but it doesn't seem to
    > be mentioned in git-diff.
    >
    > The short answer is: mostly utf8, but historically on platforms that
    > don't care (like Linux) you could get away with other encodings.
    >
    > -Peff
    
    My takeaway was to always parse it as utf8 regardless of platform or
    environment.
    
    Changes since v1:
    
     * Replace "always" with "usually"
     * Add a link to https://git-scm.com/docs/git-log
     * Replace "usually" with "often"

Published-As: https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/releases/tag/pr-git-996%2Fhexagonrecursion%2Futf8-v2
Fetch-It-Via: git fetch https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git pr-git-996/hexagonrecursion/utf8-v2
Pull-Request: https://github.com/git/git/pull/996

Range-diff vs v1:

 1:  4f1987e5e09c ! 1:  6daa652b7b15 doc: clarify the filename encoding in git diff
     @@ Commit message
          doc: clarify the filename encoding in git diff
      
          AFAICT parsing the output of `git diff --name-only master...feature`
     -    is the intended way of programmatically getting the list of files modified
     +    is the intended way of programmatically getting the list of files
     +    modified
          by a feature branch. It is impossible to parse text unless you know what
          encoding it is in. The output encoding of diff --name-only and
          diff --name-status was not documented.
      
          I asked on the mailing list and got this:
          https://public-inbox.org/git/[email-masked]/
     -    > There's some discussion in Documentation/i18n.txt, which is included in
     +    > There's some discussion in Documentation/i18n.txt, which is included
     +    in
          various manpages (e.g., https://git-scm.com/docs/git-log#_discussion)
          but it doesn't seem to be mentioned in git-diff.
     @@ Documentation/diff-options.txt: explained for the configuration variable `core.q
       
       --name-only::
      -	Show only names of changed files.
     -+	Show only names of changed files. The file names are usually encoded in UTF-8.
     ++	Show only names of changed files. The file names are often encoded in UTF-8.
      +	For more information see the discussion about encoding in the linkgit:git-log[1]
      +	manual page.
       
       --name-status::
       	Show only names and status of changed files. See the description
       	of the `--diff-filter` option on what the status letters mean.
     -+	Just like `--name-only` the file names are usually encoded in UTF-8.
     ++	Just like `--name-only` the file names are often encoded in UTF-8.
       
       --submodule[=<format>]::
       	Specify how differences in submodules are shown.  When specifying

 Documentation/diff-options.txt | 5 ++++-
 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/diff-options.txt b/Documentation/diff-options.txt
index aa2b5c11f20b..69de49f977b6 100644
--- a/Documentation/diff-options.txt
+++ b/Documentation/diff-options.txt
@@ -293,11 +293,14 @@ explained for the configuration variable `core.quotePath` (see
 linkgit:git-config[1]).
 
 --name-only::
-	Show only names of changed files.
+	Show only names of changed files. The file names are often encoded in UTF-8.
+	For more information see the discussion about encoding in the linkgit:git-log[1]
+	manual page.
 
 --name-status::
 	Show only names and status of changed files. See the description
 	of the `--diff-filter` option on what the status letters mean.
+	Just like `--name-only` the file names are often encoded in UTF-8.
 
 --submodule[=<format>]::
 	Specify how differences in submodules are shown.  When specifying

base-commit: 48bf2fa8bad054d66bd79c6ba903c89c704201f7
-- 
gitgitgadget