Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> writes:
>
>> On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 12:52:11PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>>
>>> So I think the posted patch alone without changing anything else
would be
>>> the approach to give the most benefit with the least impact to existing
>>> users, at least for now.
>> Yes, I meant to say in my original message but forgot to: I think
>> --full-tree is an important first step, no matter what happens next. It
>> gives people a way to do what they want without typing the right number
>> of ".."s, and it opens up --no-full-tree if the default changes later.
>>
>> But I do worry about it being a command-line option. You are asking the
>> user to remember to type --full-tree every time.
>
> We could redefine get_pathspec() to treat a pathspec that begins with a
> slash to be anchored at the top, i.e.
>
> $ git grep -e frotz /
>
> would be a nicer way to spell
>
> $ git grep --full-tree -e frotz
>
> and allows you more than what you can do with --full-tree, e.g.
>
> $ cd linux/subtree/some/very/deep/subdir/you/do/not/remember/exactly
> $ git grep -e frotz /linux/subtree
>
> If we do that, it will not be limited to "grep" but would bring
uniformity
> to the command set [*1*]. Of course, you can keep doing
>
> $ cd t
> $ git grep -e frotz .
>
> to look inside only the current directory, and once this new
convention is
> accepted and widely used, it would become possible to flip the default
> without causing too much pain (yes, I am agreeing with you that this
is an
> important first step).
>
> Once there is a convenient and uniform way to ask for either
behaviour, no
> matter what the default is, the scripts that want specific behaviour can
> be updated to choose whichever they want, given enough time (say, 2.0.0).
>
Speaking as a `grep' user: having git-grep behave radically different
than normal grep would be/is very annoying [*1*].
Speaking as a `git' user: having the different git commands use
radically different path conventions, relative to other git commands,
would be/is very annoying [*1*].
To make the reconciliation even more difficult, some git commands will
also work on out-of-tree paths.
Footnotes:
[*1*] And surprising to new/occasional git users.
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