Re: git full diff output issues..

On Thu, 26 May 2005, Anton Altaparmakov wrote:

Given that git already has the metadata lines in the diff ("old mode", 
"deleted file mode", etc) why not simply add another metadata line "name" 
and what follows that is the name until an end of line character (or a NUL 
if you want file names with embedded new lines).  You can then only emit 
the "name" metadata line when no actual diff is present and hence the name 
is uncertain.

Yes, that would work. 

However, I ended up just validating the name parsing by making sure that 
when I parse the "git --diff" line, I only take the name if I can see it 
being the same for both the old and the new. IOW, if I see

	diff --git a/hi b/hello

then I won't take it, but if I see

	diff --git hi there/I am/being difficult   oopsie dir/I am/being difficult

then I get "I am/being difficult" by virtue of checking the two names 
against each other.

This means, btw, that the "git --diff" format must _not_ do

	diff --git a/file /dev/null
	deleted file mode 100644

because in that case I don't trust the filename enough. Of course, this
all only happens when deleting empty files, if the file had any contents,
then I will see the unambiguos filename on the '---' line, and again be
happy.

IOW, git-apply is being pretty anal about things, but it looks like that
works out well.

			Linus