Re: [PATCH] diff: resurrect the traditional empty "diff --git" behaviour

Hi,

On Fri, 31 Aug 2007, Jeff King wrote:

On Fri, Aug 31, 2007 at 01:13:42PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

quoted

If you set diff.autorefreshindex configuration variable, it
squelches the empty "diff --git" output, and at the end of the
command, it automatically runs "update-index --refresh" without
even bothering the user.  In other words, with the configuration
variable set, people who do not care about the cache-dirtyness
do not even have to see the warning.

Nice. This is much more sane behavior, IMHO, and I think it should make 
everyone happy.

I could even imagine that this will eventually become the standard 
behaviour.

quoted

 Same here.  This patch saw only very light testing, but I
 personally think is a sane thing to do before 1.5.3 final.

Passes my light testing as well, but I have a feeling we just tested the
same things...;)

One question on the implementation (and remember that I am somewhat
ignorant of the structure of this part of the code, so the answer may be
"it's too ugly"): is there a good reason to refresh _after_ the diff?

We do not need to do it always.  After the diff, we know if the index 
needs refreshing.  Before, we don't.

It seems like when we are looking through the working tree and index the 
first time, we notice that the stat information doesn't match; why can't 
we update it then? That would save an extra working tree traversal.

But that would be intrusive in the diff machinery IMHO.  It should stay as 
read-only as possible.

BTW I was a little concerned that the locking would fail in a read-only 
setup, and that git would die(), but that has been taken care of, so I 
have no objections left.

Thanks, Junio.

Ciao,
Dscho