Re: Why is there a --binary option needed for git-apply?

Carl Worth [off-list ref] wrote:

Shawn Pearce was kind enough to direct me to the --binary option for
git-apply which solved my problem. But that left me wondering why
git-apply requires this extra command-line option to do its
job. Shouldn't git-apply simply apply the patch it is given?

If there is some reason for git-apply to only apply binary patches
when under the duress of --binary, then at the very least it could use
a better error message explaining the situation.

I see no reason why git-apply shouldn't always have --binary enabled.
If the patch contains full pre-image/post-image blob IDs and we have
an exact match against the pre-image and we have the post-image
in our tree it should just apply even if the user didn't supply
--binary.  If the patch contains a binary delta and we have an
exact match against the pre-image it should also just apply.

But if there's a binary hunk and we lack the full pre/post image blob
IDs, we lack the post image and there's no detla, or the pre-image
doesn't exactly match then we should obviously still abort with a
reasonable error message as there's no sane course of action to take.

-- 
Shawn.