Re: [PATCH 8/9 v13] difftool: teach difftool to handle directory diffs

On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 3:38 PM, Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

Tim Henigan [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

For now, would you object to an updated patch that simply detects and
ignores options that change the output of 'git diff --raw'?

As a script that uses 'git diff' is a short-term hack anyway, I think the
most cost effective thing to do is to add '--no-renames' at the end and be
done with it.

Adding '--no-renames' has no effect if the user specifies '-C -C' or
'--find-copies-harder'.  Is protecting for these cases too paranoid?

Also, the '--cc' option for viewing merge diffs is not affected by
'--no-renames'.

I have a revised patch that prunes out all of the above and warns the
user when it does so [1].

However, it also prunes them when difftool is called in serial diff
mode (i.e. non --dir-diff).  Before, if 'difftool
--find-[renames|copies]' was called it would open the external tool to
compare the two files, but the original file name was used for both
sides of the diff.

This seems confusing, but I don't know if people rely on that
behavior.  If we need to keep that behavior in the serial diff mode, I
will need to modify the patch again to only prune the options in
directory diff mode.

[1]: https://github.com/thenigan/git/commit/c3479940a36f3c7c8fe360bc244303b125f711ff