On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 9:57 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > >> Otherwise 'git format-patch <committish> -- <non-existent-path>' doesn't >> work. > > Instead of "doesn't work", I really wished you wrote something like: > > $ git format-patch <commit> -- <path> > > complains that <path> does not exist in the current work tree and the > user needs to explicitly specify "--", even though the user _did_ give > a "--". This is because it incorrectly removes "--" from the command > line arguments that is later passed to setup_revisions(). Complaining is one thing... failing to do anything is another. > Remember that you are trying to help somebody who has to write Release > Notes out of "git log" output. > > I actually have a bigger question, though. Does it even make sense to > allow pathspecs to format-patch? We sure are currently loose and take > them, but I doubt it is by design. Not everyone has clean branches only with pertinent patches. I stumbled upon this trying to re-create (cleanly) a "branch" that was constantly merged into another "master" branch that had a lot more stuff. Maybe there was a smarter way to do that with 'git rebase', but that doesn't mean format-patch -- <path> shouldn't work. > The patch itself looks good and is a candidate 'maint' material, if the > answer to the above question is a convincing "yes, because ...". Yeah, I also think this should go into 'maint'. -- Felipe Contreras -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html