Subject: Re: [Question] How to force relative path output when using `git status --porcelain=2 -z`

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2024 16:59:22 -0800

叶志晟 <[email-masked]> writes:

> I am experiencing a problem when parsing the results of `git status`.
> My primary goal is to parse the output of `git status`
> programmatically, so I am trying to parse the result of `git status
> --porcelain=2 -z`.

Interesting finding.  Here is what I tried in my working tree, where
I have a few cruft files left at the top, and ran these commands
inside the 't/' subdirectory:

    $ git status --porcelain=1
    ?? +ps8-v2-reftable-iterator-reuse
    ?? :runme.sh
    : git t/master; git status --porcelain=2
    ? ../+ps8-v2-reftable-iterator-reuse
    ? ../:runme.sh
    : git t/master; git status --porcelain=1 -z | tr '\0' '\n'
    ?? +ps8-v2-reftable-iterator-reuse
    ?? :runme.sh
    : git t/master; git status --porcelain=2 -z | tr '\0' '\n'
    ? +ps8-v2-reftable-iterator-reuse
    ? :runme.sh

I haven't dug into the history to see if these inconsistencies in
behaviour are deliberate, but I somehow suspect that the output from
"--porcelain=2" without "-z" is mistaken.  As the porcelain output
is designed to be machine parseable with or without "-z" (and the
reader of the output, the implementation of a Porcelain command, is
responsible for turning it into relative if it prefers), it would be
a mistake to turn relative output on based on the lack of "-z".

Not that we can "fix" the output from "--porcelain=2" at this point.
To changge them to uniformly show absolute (or relative for that
matter), we'd need "--porcelain=3" to preserve these inconsistency
output because it is very certain that existing users and scripts
already rely on it.

Thanks.