Hi,
On Sat, 17 Feb 2007, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@xxxxxx> writes:
>
> > On Sat, 17 Feb 2007, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> > ...
> >> But I think Jeff is right. It would make sense to let apply
> >> and perhaps 'diff', if we can somehow merge 'diff2' into it,
> >> still read from $HOME/.gitconfig if available.
> >
> > Yes, especially if you are soo used to colours as I grew to be used to
> > them. This was literally one of the reasons I wrote diff2 in the first
> > place. Another was --color-words.
>
> True. Paches welcome ;-).
I sent it out already... It was titled "[PATCH] Add `git diff2`, a GNU
diff workalike" ;-)
> > BTW any good ideas how to make diff fall back to diff2, so that no similar
> > case falls back to diff-index?
> >
> > I am really wondering if you can have a syntax which Does The Right Thing
> > at all times. Maybe we can teach diff that exactly two arguments, which
> > both exist in the filesystem, and at least one of them is not tracked,
> > then please use diff2? I wonder how often you do something like
> >
> > git diff object.c object-refs.c
> >
> > and how confusing it would be that it could mean two things, diff2 _and_
> > diff-index?
>
> I _think_ the case I would want to use diff2 are:
>
> (1) I am totally outside a git repository.
>
> or
>
> (2) I am inside a git repository but I want to compare two
> specific managed files, say GIT-VERSION-GEN and
> git-gui/GIT-VERSION-GEN.
>
> Now, (1) can be had by moving the RUN_SETUP bit out of entry for
> "diff" in git.c, and do it only when we know we are in a repo
> (maybe using "setup gently"). If we are outside of a
> repository, any of the existing diff-* brothers do not make much
> sense --- we can always do diff2.
>
> For (2), I _think_ it may be useful sometimes but not very
> often, so how about a specific option that you require upfront?
>
> git diff --fs --color-words GIT-VERSION-GEN git-gui/GIT-VERSION-GEN
>
> I can do almost that with
>
> git diff --color-words :GIT-VERSION-GEN :git-gui/GIT-VERSION-GEN
>
> but, it compares indexed ones, not from the working tree, so it
> is not exactly the same. However, the difference may not make
> practical difference in this particular example, though. When I
> want to know the differences between two tracked files, it is
> usually becausel I want to see if there are similarities to be
> consolidated, and I would do that before starting to alter
> working tree files.
>
> Also, strictly speaking, there is third one:
>
> (3) I am inside a git repository but I want to compare files
> that do not have anything to do with the project I am
> currently working on:
>
> git diff --fs /etc/skel/profile $HOME/.profile
>
> while I do not think this usage makes any sense, an explicit
> flag upfront saves you from wondering what the user meant.
And there is always
(4) I am inside a git repository and want to compare one tracked file
with one non-tracked file, and
(5) I am outside of a git repository, but want to compare one tracked
file (by absolute path) with an arbitrary other file.
The longer I think about it, the more I am convinced that trying to
integrate diff2 into diff _will_ lead to errors due to my trained, but
disobeying, fingers.
I also debated with myself calling it diff-two or diff-direct (both not
really convincing), or even diff-file (too similar to diff-files), but I
could not come up with a better name than diff2. Which is also very easy
to write, I have to say.
Ciao,
Dscho
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