b3f01ff29f
The plumbing "diff" commands look at the working tree files without refreshing the index themselves for performance reasons (the calling script is expected to do that upfront just once, before calling one or more of them). In the early days of git, they showed the "diff --git" header before they actually ask the xdiff machinery to produce patches, and ended up showing only these headers if the real contents are the same and the difference they noticed was only because the stat info cached in the index did not match that of the working tree. It was too late for the implementation to take the header that it already emitted back. But3e97c7c(No diff -b/-w output for all-whitespace changes, 2009-11-19) introduced necessary logic to keep the meta-information headers in a strbuf and delay their output until the xdiff machinery noticed actual changes. This was primarily in order to generate patches that ignore whitespaces. When operating under "-w" mode, we wouldn't know if the header is needed until we actually look at the resulting patch, so it was a sensible thing to do, but we did not realize that the same reasoning applies to stat-dirty paths. Later,296c6bb(diff: fix "git show -C -C" output when renaming a binary file, 2010-05-26) generalized this machinery and added must_show_header toggle. This is turned on when the header must be shown even when there is no patch to be produced, e.g. only the mode was changed, or the path was renamed, without changing the contents. However, when it did so, it still kept the special case for the "-w" mode, which meant that the plumbing would keep showing these phantom changes. This corrects this historical inconsistency by allowing the plumbing to omit paths that are only stat-dirty from its output in the same way as it handles whitespace only changes under "-w" option. The change in the behaviour can be seen in the updated test. Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
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GIT - the stupid content tracker
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"git" can mean anything, depending on your mood.
- random three-letter combination that is pronounceable, and not
actually used by any common UNIX command. The fact that it is a
mispronunciation of "get" may or may not be relevant.
- stupid. contemptible and despicable. simple. Take your pick from the
dictionary of slang.
- "global information tracker": you're in a good mood, and it actually
works for you. Angels sing, and a light suddenly fills the room.
- "goddamn idiotic truckload of sh*t": when it breaks
Git is a fast, scalable, distributed revision control system with an
unusually rich command set that provides both high-level operations
and full access to internals.
Git is an Open Source project covered by the GNU General Public License.
It was originally written by Linus Torvalds with help of a group of
hackers around the net. It is currently maintained by Junio C Hamano.
Please read the file INSTALL for installation instructions.
See Documentation/gittutorial.txt to get started, then see
Documentation/everyday.txt for a useful minimum set of commands, and
Documentation/git-commandname.txt for documentation of each command.
If git has been correctly installed, then the tutorial can also be
read with "man gittutorial" or "git help tutorial", and the
documentation of each command with "man git-commandname" or "git help
commandname".
CVS users may also want to read Documentation/gitcvs-migration.txt
("man gitcvs-migration" or "git help cvs-migration" if git is
installed).
Many Git online resources are accessible from http://git-scm.com/
including full documentation and Git related tools.
The user discussion and development of Git take place on the Git
mailing list -- everyone is welcome to post bug reports, feature
requests, comments and patches to git@vger.kernel.org. To subscribe
to the list, send an email with just "subscribe git" in the body to
majordomo@vger.kernel.org. The mailing list archives are available at
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=git and other archival sites.
The messages titled "A note from the maintainer", "What's in
git.git (stable)" and "What's cooking in git.git (topics)" and
the discussion following them on the mailing list give a good
reference for project status, development direction and
remaining tasks.