Re: [PATCH] Show binary file size change in diff --stat

[Rogan Dawes <lists@dawes.za.net>]

Andy Parkins wrote:
> Previously, a binary file in the diffstat would show as:
> 
>  some-binary-file.bin       |  Bin
> 
> The space after the "Bin" was never used.  This patch changes binary
> lines in the diffstat to be:
> 
>  some-binary-file.bin       |  Bin 12345 -> 123456 bytes
> 
> The very nice "->" notation was suggested by Johannes Schindelin, and
> shows the before and after sizes more clearly than "+" and "-" would.
> If a size is 0 it's not shown (although it would probably be better to
> treat no-file differently from zero-byte-file).
> 
> The user can see what changed in the binary file, and how big the new
> file is.  This is in keeping with the information in the rest of the
> diffstat.
> 
> The diffstat_t members "added" and "deleted" were unused when the file
> was binary, so this patch loads them with the file sizes in
> builtin_diffstat().  These figures are then read in show_stats() when
> the file is marked binary.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Andy Parkins <andyparkins@gmail.com>
> ---
> This is a resend; I still wish for it every time I see a --stat with
> binary files changed.
> 
> Is there any objection to it that I can address?


Well, how about my comments in <45E67978.9030805@dawes.za.net>, 
suggesting that the edit difference (number of steps required to 
transform one to the other) would be a better indication?

I think it is better because it is consistent with what we currently do 
for text files: show the number of lines added/deleted.

For binary files, it would be consistent to show the number of bytes 
added/deleted. I have not investigated the output format for the 
libxdiff binary patch format, but hopefully it would not be too 
difficult to calculate the deletions and additions.

Rogan