Re: [PATCH v3 2/4] cat-file: introduce the --filters option

Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] writes:

Johannes Schindelin [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

quoted

quoted

+	if (type != OBJ_BLOB) {
+		free(*buf);
+		return error(_("blob expected for %s '%s'"),
+			sha1_to_hex(sha1), path);
+	}
+	if (S_ISREG(mode)) {
+		struct strbuf strbuf = STRBUF_INIT;
+		if (convert_to_working_tree(path, *buf, *size, &strbuf)) {
+			free(*buf);
+			*size = strbuf.len;
+			*buf = strbuf_detach(&strbuf, NULL);
+		}
+	}

This needs to error out when mode is not ISREG just like it errors
out when type is not BLOB.

Are you sure that this is desirable in batch mode?

I do not quite see a reason why we should not diagnose a bad input
that does not produce a filtered result.  In batch mode or not, it
diagnoses when the user feeds it a non-blob, and I think it should
do so for non-regular, too. Both are "you asked me to filter, but
you shouldn't have".

Stepping back a bit, I can also see a use case that would be helped
if this filter_object() function by default gives the contents of
the requested object as-is, unless the object is a regular blob with
a path for which filtering is defined.  Driving such a mechanism via
the batch interface will allow you to first ask about the top-level
tree object (given back to you as-is), and you can iterate over its
entries recursively and get the blobs to be placed in a new working
directory (i.e. "git archive" piped to "tar xf" but regular files
are passed thru convert_to_working_tree()).  In such an application,
after you learn the mode from the containing tree object and know
that RelNotes is a symbolic link blob, you still would want the
contents out of the pipe going to the same batch interface process
that is not filtered.

So I would not mind if we define the semantics of "--filters" as
such (as long as it is clearly documented, of course).  AFAICS, the
batch interface does not call filter_object() for non-blobs, and by
returning successfully without doing anything special for a symbolic
link from filter_object() automatically gives us the "by default
return as-is, but give processed output only for regular file blobs"
semantics to the batch mode.

But for a non-batch mode, it feels somewhat funny to be giving the
as-is output without saying anything to symbolic links; we can argue
that it is being consistent with what we do in the batch mode,
though.

Thanks.