Re: [PATCH] config: Introduce --patience config variable

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Tue, Mar 06, 2012 at 02:01:42PM +0100, Thomas Rast wrote:

> >> --- a/Documentation/diff-config.txt
> >> +++ b/Documentation/diff-config.txt
> >> @@ -86,6 +86,9 @@ diff.mnemonicprefix::
> >>  diff.noprefix::
> >>  	If set, 'git diff' does not show any source or destination prefix.
> >>  
> >> +diff.patience:
> >> +    If set, 'git diff' will use patience algorithm.
> >> +
> >
> > Should this be a boolean? Or should we actually have a diff.algorithm
> > option where you specify the algorithm you want (e.g., "diff.algorithm =
> > patience")? That would free us up later to more easily add new values.
> >
> > In particular, I am thinking about --minimal. It is mutually exclusive
> > with --patience, and is simply ignored if you use patience diff.
> > we perhaps have "diff.algorithm" which can be one of "myers", "minimal"
> > (which is really myers + the minimal flag), and "patience".
> 
> Don't forget "histogram".  I have no idea why it's not documented
> (evidently 8c912eea slipped through the review cracks) but --histogram
> is supported since 1.7.7.

Ah, thanks. I had the vague feeling that we had a third algorithm
already, but I didn't see it in the docs. So yeah, I really think this
should be diff.algorithm, with a value of "myers", "patience", or
"histogram" (and possibly "minimal", depending how we want to treat
that).

-Peff