Re: [PATCH] difftool: handle changing symlinks in dir-diff mode

David Aguilar [off-list ref] writes:

Reading the code again, the point of add_left_or_right()
is to populate the worktree (done later in the loop) with
the stuff we read from Git.  Thus, if we changed just this
section to call get_symlink() then we should not even try
to checkout any symlink entries in !use_wt_file(...)
block where checkout_entry() / create_symlink_file() are called.

Since the symlinks2 hashmap already populates the worktree
then that code should instead simply skip symlinks.

OK, that would simplify things, certainly.

I'll take a stab at adding a get_symlink() helper, adjust
the code so that add_left_or_right() is populated, and
special-case the checkout_entry() code path to simply skip
over null SHA1s.

Did you mean s/null SHA1s/S_ISLNK()s/?

One minor thing I noticed is that I had to use "echo -n"
for the stuff coming out of strbuf_readlink(), and
plain "echo" for entries that come in via read_sha1_file()
content passed to add_left_or_right().

That suggests that maybe I should append a newline to the
output from strbuf_readlink() so that it matches Git.
Does that sound right?  Does Git store symlink entries
with a terminating newline?

Do not append a newline.  Unless the pathname of the target you are
symlinking to ends with LF, readlink() won't end with LF, and the
stand-in file shouldn't, either.

By the way, avoid "echo -n"; use "printf '%s'" instead.

Thanks.