On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 11:44:16AM -0500, Jay Soffian wrote: > > The need to give --ext-diff is mentioned in 72909be (Add diff-option > > --ext-diff, 2007-06-30) but its log message doesn't 'explain' why external > > diff isn't used by default and you need to pass that extra option. > > "To prevent funky games with external diff engines, git-log and > friends prevent external diff engines from being called." > > Seemed reason enough to me. I don't remember discussing it at that time, but much later when touching the external diff code and adding textconv, Junio and I came to the conclusion that textconv was reasonable to do as part of "git log -p", as the result is just an internal conversion that still results in a text diff. Whereas an external diff might be terribly confusing, as it could be spawning graphical viewers or producing output which does not match well with the log output. > > Probably --ext-diff should be the default? > > Or available via a config option anyway. If you were going to do such a config option, it might make sense to make it an attribute of the diff driver rather than a global "use external diff". Then each diff driver could say "Yes, I am reasonable to be run as part of log -p". -Peff -- 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