Subject: [Git BUG] Please do not use "-B -M" in "diff" family for now

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2015 11:12:34 -0800

Please avoid the combination "-B -M" when running "diff" family of
commands, as it can produce incorrect results [*1*] in corner cases.
Use of either "-B" or "-M" by itself is fine, but not both at the
same time.

This problem exists even in Git v1.7.12, and I have no reason to
suspect that it worked correctly in any earlier versions, so I do
not consider it an urgent issue to fix during the pre-release for
upcoming Git v2.3 release.

End of TL;DR.

For a simple reproduction, go to your copy of the kernel tree and do
this:

    $ git diff -B -M v2.6.13 v2.6.12 -- \
        arch/ppc64/kernel/rtas_pci.c arch/ppc64/kernel/pSeries_pci.c >:patch

    $ git reset --hard
    $ git checkout v2.6.13

    $ git apply --cached --whitespace=nowarn :patch
    error: arch/ppc64/kernel/pSeries_pci.c: already exists in index

This is not a bug in "apply", but in "diff".  The resulting patch
looks like this:

    $ git apply --whitespace=nowarn --numstat --summary :patch
    112     5       arch/ppc64/kernel/pSeries_pci.c
     rename arch/ppc64/kernel/{rtas_pci.c => pSeries_pci.c} (81%)

That is, it wants to rename rtas_pci.c to pSeries_pci.c with a bit
of editing.

However, what really happens when going from 2.6.13 to 2.6.12 is
this:

    $ git diff v2.6.13 v2.6.12 -- \
        arch/ppc64/kernel/rtas_pci.c arch/ppc64/kernel/pSeries_pci.c |
        git apply --whitespace=nowarn --numstat --summary
    478     19      arch/ppc64/kernel/pSeries_pci.c
    0       495     arch/ppc64/kernel/rtas_pci.c
     delete mode 100644 arch/ppc64/kernel/rtas_pci.c

That is:

    #1 rtas_pci.c exists in 2.6.13 but not 2.6.12.

    #2 pSeries_pci.c exists in both 2.6.12 and 2.6.13 but is majorly
       rewritten; in fact, the difference between rtas_pci.c in
       2.6.13 and pSeries_pci.c in 2.6.12 is much smaller than the
       difference between pSeries_pci.c from 2.6.13 and 2.6.12.

What seems to happen is that "diff -B" splits the above #2 into
"removal of pSeries_pci.c with contents from 2.6.13" and "creation
of pSeries_pci.c with contents from 2.6.12" and these gets further
combined with the "removal of rtas_pci.c" [*2*].  In the end result,
we incorrectly get "rename rtas_pci.c to create pSeries_pci.c with
some changes".  We shouldn't do this because pSeries_pci.c is not
created and is not a new file.

[Footnotes]

*1* "git apply" refuses to apply the output affected by the bug, so
    at least this will not lead to silent corruption.

*2* The "-B" option was introduced solely to find a possible
    rename/copy source to express this sequence:

    $ cp A B
    $ edit B slightly ;# optional
    $ edit A heavily

as if it was done like this instead:

    $ mv A B
    $ edit B slightly ;# optional
    $ create B from scratch

Without "-B", the change would be expressed as "Heavily edit A,
create B from scratch", and with "-B", we would say "Create B by
copying from A and then edit, and edit A heavily", which would
result in more readable patch (in fact, we would see in the output
of "diff -B -M v2.6.12 v2.6.13" exactly that).