Hi John,
On Tue, Jul 9, 2019 at 3:57 PM McRoberts, John <John.McRoberts@xxxxxx> wrote:
>
> I am responsible for generating a list of all files changed between two
> successive releases of software. I was using 'git diff' but have run into a
> problem.
>
> Consider the following situation: A development branch comes off of commit A
> and files are changed three times. A tag (REL1) is placed on the third
> commit. Then the branch is merged back to master. At this point, master's
> HEAD is at C (and it remains there). Two development branches are created
> off of master, the first of which is not important here. In the second one,
> there are files changed and a tag (REL2) applied.
>
>
> ---------------------[I]
>
> / {dev branch}
>
> /
>
> /
> {master branch}
> /
> [A] ---------------------------------[B]------------------------------->[C]
> master <HEAD>
> \ filelist 6 / \
> \ /
> \
> \ /
> \
> \ /
> \
> \ {development branch} /
> \
> \------->[D]----------------------->[E]-------------------[F]
> \------[G]--------[H]
> REL1
> REL2
> fileset 1 fileset 2 fileset 3
> fileset 4 fileset 5
>
> At this point, I run
> 'git diff -m --first-parent --pretty=fuller --decorate=short
> --name-only REL2..REL2'
Wow, we really, really need to throw errors and warnings when people
use crazy range operators with diff.[1][2] What version of git are
you using that accepts --decorate=short as an argument to `git diff`?
And why in the world does git diff accept --first-parent or
--pretty=fuller?!? That's insane for git-diff to swallow that.
(#leftoverbits?) Also, I think you meant `REL1` one of the two times
you wrote `REL2`, which makes me suspect you may have done some
copy-edit-paste and didn't try this actual command.
> I expect to see only filesets 4 and 5 listed. I also see filesets 1, 2 and
> 3 showing up. This means that the git diff command is showing files that,in
> fact, did not change between the two tags. By the way, I verified with a
> file by file comparison that under REL2 and REL1, the files represented by
> filesets 1, 2 and 3 had identical contents.
>From your description, I assume you actually ran something like
git diff --name-only REL1..REL2
which compares REL2 to the merge base of REL1 and REL2 (yes, this is
totally counter-intuitive to a large percentage of the git userbase,
but it is well documented and hard to change). Also from your
description, what you seem to want is
git diff --name-only REL1 REL2
since you want to compare the two endpoints. Does that help get what you want?
Hope that helps,
Elijah
[1] https://public-inbox.org/git/CABPp-BECj___HneAYviE3SB=wU6OTcBi3S=+Un1sP6L4WJ7agA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/
[2] https://public-inbox.org/git/CABPp-BGg_iSx3QMc-J4Fov97v9NnAtfxZGMrm3WfrGugOThjmA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/
