Re: [PATCH 1/4] diff/xdiff: refactor EOF-EOL detection

Michael J Gruber [off-list ref] writes:

I'm sorry, but that makes 3 out of 3 respondents who didn't seem to read
what I wrote.

You seem to think three out of three people didn't read nor understood
your argument, but my take on it is that three out of three of people who
cared about the issue thought your justification was not convincing.

Symlinks are minority among the tracked contents (e.g. in git.git there is
only one), and they are almost always a single incomplete line.  When they
change, you do want to notice, and I happen to find it a good visual aid
to have these incomplete line indicators, in addition to the unusual
120000 mode on the index line.

Peff uses --textconv to show changes to the exif information on his photo
collections.  If he has any symlinks, and if he finds that removal of "\No
newline" is a regression and not an improvement, what recourse does your
patch give him?  Saying --no-textconv to work around that regression is
not a solution, isn't it?

If you start from a false premise that "\No newline" was an unnecessary
warning, it may seem that the output (which almost always is given for
symlinks) needs "improving".  But have you considered a possibility that
removal of the line from the output is not an improvement?