Re: git log --stat FILE

[Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>]

Marcus Comstedt wrote:
> Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > Diffstat is just a diff format (a way of presenting diff); '--stat'
> > is described in "Common _diff_ options" of git-log(1) manpage.
> >
> > But whats obvious to me might not be obvious to everyone.
> 
> To me (and probably many others), a "diff" is the output of the
> command "/usr/bin/diff".  I notice that git seems to refer to this as
> a "patch" instead.  Nevertheless, the documentation of --full-diff
> explicitly talks about "log -p", rather than "diffs" in general.  So
> it's not clear from the documentation that it affects other types of
> diffs than those produced by -p ("patches").

To me (and probably many others), a "diff" is something that describe
differences between two versions (compares two version).  Note that
'GNU diff' (and other "/usr/bin/diff") supports three output formats:
ed based, context and unified formats.  git-diff supports patch format
(unified, with some extensions), raw aka diff-tree format, and various
versions of diffstat format.

The '--full-diff' is a git-log option, not diff option, as it affects
how git-log uses path limiter.  "git log -p <path>..." is an example
of copmmand that shows diffs with commits, as "git log <path>..." alone
doesn't show diffs (in any format).  But perhaps the description of
'--full-diff' option could be improved.

The '--stat' is git-diff option, as you can see by running e.g.
"git diff --stat HEAD^!"

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland