Re: [RFC PATCH] diff: add option to report binary files in raw diffs

[Justin Tobler <jltobler@gmail.com>]

On 25/11/05 12:04AM, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Justin Tobler <jltobler@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > Maybe the output should be something like:
> >
> >   binary=tt,incomplete=ic,crlf=cl
> >
> > or something along those lines. That way we could freely extend in the
> > future without having to worry about a specific order. If we think all
> > of the raw diff extension modes would only report with yes/no for each
> > file we could just do:
> >
> >   binary=yn,incomplete=yy,crlf=nn
> >
> > but maybe we should be more flexible and leave it up to the mode to
> > decide what its values can be?
> >
> > Also, maybe this info could be on a newline following each raw diff
> > entry? Something like:
> >
> >   :100644 100644 a1961526 e231acb1 M	foo
> >   binary=yy
> >   :100644 100644 31eedd5c 402a70d7 M	bar
> >   binary=nn
> 
> I know these are parse-able, but quite honestly, both sounds
> somewhat backwards, if you meant to make this easier to parse by
> simple scripts.  Scripts do not mind their input line wider than 80
> columns, but it is cumbersome if they have to take each pair of
> lines and combine them to process.  And repeated keywords like
> binary= etc., do not look like it is less error prone for scripts to
> parse them out, either.  So, I dunno.

Personally, while keywords like "binary=" add a bit of complexity to the
output, I do like the idea of having the output be self-documenting that
way the parsers can avoid being aware of the inputted arguments or some
predetermined output order. I do agree though that spreading the output
across multiple lines doesn't really help us much as it probably doesn't
matter whether we split on a comma or a newline. It's probably simpler
just to keep it all on a single line.

Currently the output in the next version will look like:

  :100644 100644 a1961526 e231acb1 binary=yy M	foo
  :100644 100644 31eedd5c 402a70d7 binary=nn M	bar

Thanks,
-Justin