Re: [PATCH 2/3] revision: exclude trees/blobs given commit

Jonathan Tan [off-list ref] writes:

When the --objects argument is given to rev-list, an argument of the
form "^$tree" can be given to exclude all blobs and trees reachable from
that tree, but an argument of the form "^$commit" only excludes that
commit, not any blob or tree reachable from it. Make "^$commit" behave
consistent to "^$tree".

So with this:

    $ git rev-list --objects ^HEAD^@ HEAD ^HEAD^{tree}

should be a round-about way to say

    $ git rev-parse HEAD

;-)

The expression wants to list everything reachable from HEAD, but it
does not want to show its parents (i.e. ^HEAD^@) and it does not
want to show its tree (i.e. ^HEAD^{tree}), so the only thing that
remains is the commit object HEAD and nothing else?

I agree with Peff's comment about objects that may appear beyond the
boundary (i.e. merge base between interesting ones and uninteresting
ones); whether that inaccuracy matters depends on what you want to
use this for---if you want to hide sensitive objects it does, if you
want to reduce the network cost without incurring too much cpu cost,
it probably does not.