Hello,
here is a small improvement to the documentation of git's extended diff
format. Can this please be included?
Thanks,
Andreas
Signed-off-by: Andreas Gruenbacher <agruen@xxxxxxx>
---
Documentation/diff-generate-patch.txt | 23 ++++++++++++++++++++++-
1 files changed, 22 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
diff --git a/Documentation/diff-generate-patch.txt b/Documentation/diff-
generate-patch.txt
index 8f9a241..05f2164 100644
--- a/Documentation/diff-generate-patch.txt
+++ b/Documentation/diff-generate-patch.txt
@@ -18,7 +18,8 @@ diff format.
+
The `a/` and `b/` filenames are the same unless rename/copy is
involved. Especially, even for a creation or a deletion,
-`/dev/null` is _not_ used in place of `a/` or `b/` filenames.
+`/dev/null` is _not_ used in place of `a/` or `b/` filenames in the
+`diff --git` line.
+
When rename/copy is involved, `file1` and `file2` show the
name of the source file of the rename/copy and the name of
@@ -38,11 +39,31 @@ the file that rename/copy produces, respectively.
dissimilarity index <number>
index <hash>..<hash> <mode>
+ Path names in extended header lines do not include the `a/` and `b/`
+ prefixes. The index header includes the <mode> only if the file
+ mode does not change; otherwise, explicit mode headers are included.
+
3. TAB, LF, double quote and backslash characters in pathnames
are represented as `\t`, `\n`, `\"` and `\\`, respectively.
If there is need for such substitution then the whole
pathname is put in double quotes.
+ Space characters are not quoted and so when files are copied or
+ renamed, the file names in the "diff --git" line can be
+ ambiguous.
+
+4. All the `a/` files refer to files before the commit, and all the `b/`
+ files refer to files after the commit; it is incorrect to apply the
+ changes to each file sequentially. For example, this patch will
+ swap a and b:
+
+ diff --git a/a b/b
+ rename from a
+ rename to b
+ diff --git a/b b/a
+ rename from b
+ rename to a
+
The similarity index is the percentage of unchanged lines, and
the dissimilarity index is the percentage of changed lines. It
is a rounded down integer, followed by a percent sign. The
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