From: Sergey Organov <sorganov@gmail.com>
To: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Cc: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>,
git@vger.kernel.org, Matthieu Moy <matthieu.moy@univ-lyon1.fr>
Subject: Re: Can we clarify the purpose of `git diff -s`?
Date: Thu, 11 May 2023 21:04:15 +0300 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87lehu219c.fsf@osv.gnss.ru> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <xmqqwn1ewyzx.fsf@gitster.g> (Junio C. Hamano's message of "Thu, 11 May 2023 10:37:22 -0700")
Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
> Sergey Organov <sorganov@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I entirely agree with your conclusion: obviously, -s (--silent) and
>> --no-patch are to be different for UI to be even remotely intuitive, and
>> I'd vote for immediate fix of --no-patch semantics even though it's a
>> backward-incompatible change.
>
> I forgot to write about this part.
>
> tl;dr. While I do not think the current "--no-patch" that turns off
> things other than "--patch" is intuitive, an "immediate" change is
> not possible. Let's do one fix at a time.
>
> The behaviour came in the v1.8.4 days with a series that was merged
> by e2ecd252 (Merge branch 'mm/diff-no-patch-synonym-to-s',
> 2013-07-22), which
>
> * made "--no-patch" a synonym for "-s";
>
> * fixed "-s --patch", in which the effect of "-s" got stuck and did
> not allow the patch output to be re-enabled again with "--patch";
>
> * updated documentation to explain "--no-patch" as a synonym for
> "-s".
>
> While it is very clear that the intent of the author was to make it
> a synonym for "-s" and not a "feature-wise enable/disable" option,
> that is what we've run with for the past 10 years. You identified
> bugs related the "-s got stuck" problem and we recently fixed that.
I wonder, why this intention of the author has not been opposed at that
time is beyond my understanding, sorry! What exactly did it bring to
make --no-patch a synonym for -s? Not only it's illogical, it's even not
useful as being more lengthy.
Probably nobody actually cared at that time, me thinks.
>
> "Should --no-patch be changed" can be treated as a separate issue,
> and whenever we can treat two things separately, I want to do so, to
> keep the potential blast radius smaller.
Sure it's a separate change. When I said "immediate" I meant that there
is no need for some transition measures like config variables, not that
it is to be included in the "fix -s".
> That way, if an earlier change turns out OK but the other change
> causes severe regression, we can only revert or rework the latter. An
> exception is if committing to one change (e.g. "fix '-s'") makes the
> other change (e.g. "redefine --no-patch") impossible, but we all know
> it is not the case here. I gave an outline of how to go about it in
> the log message of that "fix '-s'" patch.
>
> I do not think it will break established use cases too badly to fix
> the behaviour of "-s" so that it does not get stuck. We saw an
> existing breakage in one test, but asking the owners of scripts that
> make the same mistake of assuming "-s" gets stuck for some but not
> other options to fix that assumption based on an earlier faulty
> implementation is much easier.
>
> But "git diff --stat --patch --no-patch", which suddenly starts
> showing diffstat after you make "--no-patch" no longer a synonym for
> "-s", has a much larger potential to break the existing workflows.
> And I do not think asking the users who followed the documented
> "--no-patch is a synonym for -s" to change their script because we
> decided to make "--no-patch" no longer a synonym is much harder.
Why somebody would use --no-patch instead of -s when she means -s? Is't
it obvious that
git diff --stat --patch -s
is not only shorter but dramatically more clear than
git diff --stat --patch --no-patch
???
Taking this into account, I'd predict no breakage at all.
> So, no, I do not think we can immediately "fix". I do not think
> anybody knows if it can be done "immediately" or needs a careful
> planning to transition, and I offhand do not know if it is even
> possible to transition without fallout.
This has been expected, and this is one of the things that stops me from
trying to "fix" anything in the Git UI recently. I think that perfectly
legit carefulness from the maintainer to be conservative in accepting of
such changes goes a bit too far, sorry!
Thanks,
-- Sergey Organov
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2023-05-11 18:05 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 39+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2023-05-11 3:14 Can we clarify the purpose of `git diff -s`? Felipe Contreras
2023-05-11 11:59 ` Sergey Organov
2023-05-11 16:26 ` Junio C Hamano
2023-05-11 17:37 ` Junio C Hamano
2023-05-11 18:04 ` Sergey Organov [this message]
2023-05-11 18:27 ` Junio C Hamano
2023-05-11 18:36 ` Felipe Contreras
2023-05-11 18:17 ` Felipe Contreras
2023-05-11 17:41 ` Felipe Contreras
2023-05-11 18:31 ` Sergey Organov
2023-05-11 19:10 ` Felipe Contreras
2023-05-11 19:32 ` Sergey Organov
2023-05-11 19:54 ` Felipe Contreras
2023-05-11 20:24 ` Sergey Organov
2023-05-11 20:59 ` Felipe Contreras
2023-05-11 22:49 ` Sergey Organov
2023-05-11 23:28 ` Felipe Contreras
2023-05-12 8:40 ` Sergey Organov
2023-05-12 19:19 ` Felipe Contreras
[not found] ` <5bb24e0208dd4a8ca5f6697d578f3ae0@SAMBXP02.univ-lyon1.fr>
2023-05-12 8:15 ` Matthieu Moy
2023-05-12 17:03 ` Junio C Hamano
2023-05-12 18:21 ` Sergey Organov
2023-05-12 19:21 ` Junio C Hamano
2023-05-12 19:34 ` Junio C Hamano
2023-05-12 20:28 ` Felipe Contreras
2023-05-12 20:47 ` Junio C Hamano
2023-05-12 21:01 ` Felipe Contreras
2023-05-12 21:47 ` Junio C Hamano
2023-05-12 21:48 ` Junio C Hamano
2023-05-12 23:21 ` Felipe Contreras
2023-05-12 21:41 ` Sergey Organov
2023-05-12 22:17 ` Junio C Hamano
2023-05-12 22:47 ` Sergey Organov
2023-05-12 23:07 ` Felipe Contreras
2023-05-13 14:58 ` Philip Oakley
2023-05-13 17:45 ` Sergey Organov
2023-05-12 19:47 ` Felipe Contreras
2023-05-12 19:34 ` Felipe Contreras
2023-05-12 19:17 ` Felipe Contreras
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