Re: [PATCH] difftool: Make directory diff symlink work tree

On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 3:24 PM, John Keeping [off-list ref] wrote:

When I tried this I got the expected behaviour even without this patch.

It turns out that an uncommitted, but *staged* change emits the SHA1 of
the blob rather than the null SHA1.  Do you get the desired behaviour if
you "git reset" before using difftool?

I tried this:

$ git diff --raw HEAD^
:100644 100644 f35de0f... ead9399... M  diff-lib.c

$ git reset HEAD^
Unstaged changes after reset:
M diff-lib.c

$ git diff --raw
:100644 100644 f35de0f... 0000000... M  diff-lib.c

$ git difftool -d

and the last command did indeed create symlinks into my working tree
rather than file copies.

So... it seems that using git-reset is at least a workaround to get
the symlink behavior I want as a user, though the dance I have to do
is a little more awkward than `git difftool -d HEAD^` would be.

If so I think you want some new mode of operation for difftool instead
of this patch which will also affect unrelated commands.

Are you suggesting that difftool do the reset work above given a new
option or by default?

--
Matt McClure
http://www.matthewlmcclure.com
http://www.mapmyfitness.com/profile/matthewlmcclure