Re: [PATCH, RFC] diff: add option to show context between close chunks

On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 12:12:17AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Yeah.  René wanted this for _human consumption_, not mechanical patch
application, so "hardcoding" literally there in the very low level of the
diff callchain is not quite right (it would affect format-patch which is
primarily for mechanical application).

I guess you could make the hardcoded value 1 for everybody else and 0 for
format-patch.

I see your reasoning, but at the same time, a large portion of patches I
read are from format-patch (and René even said that he was trying to
save the user from the "apply then diff just to look at the patch"
annoyance). And I have personally, as a patch submitter, created some
format-patch output sent to the git list with -U5 to combine hunks and
make it more readable for reviewers.

Not to mention that I sometimes apply or post the output of "git diff".

To me that it implies that either:

 - the increased chance of conflict is not a problem in practice, and we
   should have the option on by default everywhere

 - it is a problem, in which case we should ask the user to turn on the
   feature manually instead of second-guessing how they will use the
   resulting patch (which they might not even know, since they are
   making assumptions about how other people might use the patch, and
   they must decide for their situation between shipping something that
   is more readable but slightly more conflict prone, or as easy to
   apply as possible)

-Peff