Subject: Re: Wrong tabs in terminal output for git diff

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2021 10:26:10 +0900

Jeff King <[email-masked]> writes:

> We do have a few "display only" modes. You mentioned --color-words, but
> --textconv is similar (and of course --ext-diff can generate whatever it
> wants). I'm not sure how helpful that is, though, because humans end up
> needing to look at "real" diffs that can be applied often enough (and as
> you note, changing those would break them).

Add "--irreversible-delete" to the set.  We should perhaps find a
migration path to eventually disable these "display only" things in
format-patch [*1*], if we do not already do so.

> This could be addressed at the viewing layer, though, which is what's
> converting the tabstops to screen positions. For example, "less -x9,17"
> adjusts the tab stops in the pager to account for the extra leading
> character (and you can put it into $LESS or $GIT_PAGER to have it kick
> in automatically).

That's a cute one (and can be used not just on "git diff" output but
on output from "diff" by other people).

Thanks.

[References]

*1* https://lore.kernel.org/git/[email-masked]/