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

On Sonntag, 6. Juni 2010, Junio C Hamano wrote:

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.

You make whole lot of assumptions, don't you?

A repository cannot have many tracked symlinks? They change infrequently? 
Additional clues are needed to notice that they change?

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?

Oh, I'm pretty sure that Peff wouldn't use --textconv on his repository if he 
cared that diffs contained complete reproducible information.

If you start from a false premise that "\No newline" was an unnecessary
warning,

That's a strawman. Michael never meant it that way although he said it 
(unfortunately).

For me, the 120000 mode is visual clue enough (and a very strong visual 
trigger, BTW) when I browse through a diff. It's appropriate that "\No 
newline" is suppressed for symbolic links so that it does not distract from 
the mode line, because "\No newline" is a much strong trigger (that makes 
alarm bells ring).

-- Hannes