Ντέντος Σταύρος On Fri, Feb 22, 2019 at 9:38 PM Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > "brian m. carlson" <sandals@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > > > On Thu, Feb 21, 2019 at 03:40:09PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote: > >> Σταύρος Ντέντος <stdedos@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > >> > Would it make sense / be easy enough to have some clobbering check / flag? > >> > >> Given that use of '-o' to redirect to a fresh/new directory would > >> reduce the risk of such clobbering, and use of '-v' to force > >> different filenames would reduce the risk of such clobbering, > >> it seems to me that aborting the operation when we fail to open > >> the output, without any option to override and allow clobbering, > >> would make sense. If existing files record 4 patch series > >> 0001-x.patch, 0002-y.patch, 0003-z.patch, and 0004-w.patch, and you > >> generate with "format-patch --allow-clobbering" a three-patch series, > >> it would overwrite 0001 thru 0003 but will not remove 0004, so the > >> end result will still be confusing. There might be a handful of complexities / undefined behaviors coming out of this; however, I think "not" overwriting a file to be a higher directive (given that then, it is unrecoverable). Using any of the '-o', '-v' might be helpful - if you are re-running commands from history, however, it wouldn't necessarily provide any protection ;-) > > I think a flag for this would be useful. For people that store tarballs > > (or pristine-tar files) and patches in their repository, overwriting the > > existing files is definitely desired. > > > > My personal preference is that the flag be --no-clobber, but I can see > > arguments for the other side as well. On my head, I was thinging that preferably `git config format-patch.no-clobber true` could be set, instead of (continuously) carrying around a `--no-clobber` flag. I should've probably be more clear about that. However, any way is "as good as any". > That's actually simpler, which is good, as we do not have to worry > about adjusting the existing tests that rely on the clobbering > behaviour ;-). > > I'll find time before I leave for my offline week, but this > obviously will not be merged before the upcoming release. > > Thanks. I think I've mostly outlined a three-patch series to do > this ready. > > > > > > >