Joey Hess <id@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> How about changing the documentation to something like this to make
> more explicit what it does.
>
> --with-tree=<tree-ish>
> Treat all files in the <tree-ish> as if they were present in the index.
> When using --error-unmatch to expand the user supplied <file> (i.e.
> path pattern) arguments to paths, this has the effect that paths which were
> removed in the index since the named <tree-ish> are still present.
> Using this option with -s or -u options does not make any sense.
If <tree-ish> has a file F and the index has a file F/1, I do not
think the command can pretend that F is present in the index (which
requires it to also pretend that F/1 does not exist), so the above
description is not quite right---the description needs to be
tightened a bit, I am afraid [*1*].
But more importantly, given the fact that we needed piecemeal
fix-ups like 4b4e26d2 ("Teach ls-files --with-tree=<tree> to work
with options other than -c", 2008-11-16), and the fact that your
description above still mentions "incompatible with -s", I strongly
suspect that the implementation as-is would still *not* perform the
way you describe above. In some modes, it won't pretend as if all
of <tree-ish> are present in the index.
And I do not think I care that much to respond to a bug report that
claims the above paragraph describes the way the command ought to
work, either, but apparently you do care much more than I do, so
perhaps you can respond to such bug reports whey they come and I do
not have to worry about them too much ;-)
[Footnote]
*1* It actually pretends that entries in <tree-ish> are at stage #1,
all the originally unmerged entries are at stage #3, and shows
entries at stage #0 (i.e. merged entries in the original index)
and stage #1 (i.e. from <tree-ish>), but only those that do not
have corresponding stage #0 entries. That is why "-s" won't
make sense (i.e. from an entry being at stage #3, you cannot
tell if it were originally at stage #1, #2 or #3), and "-u"
won't make sense (i.e. ditto---and there is no good explanation
as to why <tree-ish> entries appear at stage #1, other than the
real reason: this is only to be able to enumerate all paths that
are in <tree-ish> and the index, so that error-unmatch can say
"Ah, that path is in the HEAD so it is not a typo" even for a
path that has been removed from the index when running "git
commit <paths>").
