Re: [PATCH v2] blame: avoid checking if a file exists on the working tree if a revision is provided

On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 11:11 PM, Eric Sunshine [off-list ref] wrote:

This subject is a bit long; try to keep it to about 72 characters or less.

More importantly, though, it doesn't give us a high level overview of
the purpose of the patch, which is that it is fixing blame to work on
a file at a given revision even if the file no longer exists in the
worktree.

Sure!

git-blame documentation does not advertise "blame <file> <rev>" as a
valid invocation. It does advertise "blame <rev> -- <file>", and this
case already works correctly even when <file> does not exist in the
worktree.

git-annotate documentation, on the other hand, does advertise
"annotate <file> <rev>", and it fails to work when <file> is absent
from the worktree, so perhaps you want to sell this patch as fixing
git-annotate instead?

So, do I forget about the blame patch (given that I'm not fixing an
advertised syntax, even if it's supported) and fix annotate instead or
do I fix both? And if I should swing for both, do I create a single
patch or a chain of two patches, one for each builtin?

This example is certainly illustrative, but an even more common case
may be trying to blame/annotate a file which existed in an older
revision but doesn't exist anymore at HEAD, thus is absent from the
worktree. Such a case could likely be described in a sentence or two
without resorting to verbose examples (though, not a big deal if you
keep the example).

K.

A new test or two would be welcome, possibly in t/annotate-tests.sh if
you consider this also fixing git-blame, or in t8001-annotate.sh if
you're selling it only as a fix for git-annotate.

I guess I'll wait for feedback about my first question before I decide
what I will do about the tests.

Thank you very much for your comments, Eric.