>> I currently work around the problem by adding a dummy empty branch, but >> being able to use the revision 00000000 as a known reference to an empty >> tree would come in really handy, and since it's already used at various >> places in Git (post-receive hook and "git show" output, at least), it >> would seem like a natural extension. > The empty tree also has a name: > > $ git hash-object -t tree /dev/null > 4b825dc642cb6eb9a060e54bf8d69288fbee4904 Yay! git diff 4b825dc642cb6eb9a060e54bf8d69288fbee4904..d59cfff346c3e210adc26501f8cebf8da5ab2e7d seems to give me the expected diff. Thanks! > And hopefully that explains why "000000" does not necessarily make a > good placeholder for "the empty thing". There are multiple empty things, > and it is not clear what: > git diff 0000000 1234abcd > means. Is 0000000 a tree? A blob? Well, Git is the one who uses 000000 to refer to an empty thing, but indeed it seems like it does inconsistently: it's sometimes used as the "empty blob" and sometimes as an "empty tree". Stefan -- 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