Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> writes: > Is "git add -p" broken, then? It takes pathspecs relative to the current > directory, but "git add -p" without arguments operates from the root, > not from the current subdirectory. I would say so; "add -p" was an ill-executed afterthought. The codepath was originally meant to be used from "-i" as the top-level interface that was a fully interactive way to prepare for the next commit, which is an operation that is inherently full-tree. There are two schools of thought in previous threads discussing full-tree vs current-directory-relative. I think each side has merits. If we defaulted to the current directory (i.e. "git grep"), that would feel more natural as it is more consistent with how tools that are not git aware (e.g. "GNU grep" run in the same directory) behave. A downside is when you are somewhere deep in a working tree, you have to know how deep you are and repeat "../" that many times, i.e. "git grep pattern ../../" If we defaulted to the root-level (i.e. "git diff"), you do not have that downside (iow, "git diff" run from a deep directory is a full tree operation), and you can limit the scope to the current directory by a single dot, i.e. "git diff .". A huge downside is that this may feel awkward for new people who do not yet breath git [*1*], as no other git aware tool would behave like this, limiting its scope to some directory that is higher above. In the past, I have took the third position, saying that tools that semantically needs to be full-tree should be full-tree (i.e. ones that make or format commits), and others should be relative to the current directory (i.e. ones that are used to inspect your progress, such as grep), but that is not a very understandable guideline that people can easily follow. If we have to choose between the two and make things consistent, my personal preference is to make everything relative to the current working directory. I actually do not mind too much myself if all commands that can take pathspecs consistently defaulted to "full-tree" pathspec given no pathspec. But if we were to go that route, everybody should join their voice to defend that decision when outside people say "in 1.8.0 'git grep' run from a subdirectory shows matches from all the irrelevant parts of the tree; with all the cruft its output is unreadable". I won't be the sole champion of such a behaviour when I do not fully believe in it. [Footnote] *1* In the case of "git diff", this is largely mitigated as its output is always relative to the root of the working tree, but other tools may not have that luxury. -- 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