Re: builtin difftool parsing issue

On Tue, Jan 3, 2017 at 10:47 AM, Stefan Beller [off-list ref] wrote:

On Mon, Jan 2, 2017 at 11:05 AM, Paul Sbarra [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

quoted

I would have expected `git difftool --submodule=diff ...` to work... What
are the problems?

The docs for difftool state...
"git difftool is a frontend to git diff and accepts the same options
and arguments."

I think such a sentence in the man page is dangerous, as nobody
was caught this issue until now. There have been numerous authors
and reviewers that touched "diff --submodule=<format>, but as there
is no back-reference, hinting that the patch is only half done, and the
difftool also needs to implement such an option.

We should reword the man page either as

  "git difftool is a frontend to git diff and accepts the most(?) options
  and arguments."

or even be explicit and list the arguments instead. There we could also
describe differences if any (e.g. the formats available might be different
for --submodule=<format>)

I agree with updating the documentation. Difftool would require
extensive work to support the --submodule format, and I'm not sure
it's worth it.

Thanks,
Jake