Re: [PATCH v2] Make git selectively and conditionally ignore certain stat fields

[Ramsay Jones <ramsay@ramsay1.demon.co.uk>]

Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Robin Rosenberg <robin.rosenberg@dewire.com> writes:

> That configurability is a slipperly slope to drag us into giving users
> more complexity that does not help them very much, I suspect.
> 
> Earlier somebody mentioned "size and mtime is often enough", so I
> think a single option core.looseStatInfo (substitute "loose" with
> short, minimum or whatever adjective that is more appropriate---I am
> not good at picking phrases, it sounds to me a way to more loosely
> define stat info cleanliness than we usually do) that makes us
> ignore all fields (regardless of their zero-ness) other than those
> two fields might not be a bad way to go.

At one point, I used to build (and test) the MSVC version of git on
cygwin, which leads to exactly the same problem. So, this is not just
an EGit/JGit vs c-git issue, although there can't be many people that
will have this problem. (Mixing the MinGW and cygwin versions on the
same repo will also have this problem).

I had a patch which, essentially, did what you suggest above; ie ignore
everything other than size and mtime, *including* ignoring the zero-ness
in the index. (I just don't understand why you would think of doing
otherwise!! ;-) ). As part of that patch, I also suppressed the "empty diff"
output that used to be shown for stat-dirty files (that's been fixed now
right?), otherwise using gitk was a pain.

[BTW, given the "schizophrenic stat" functions on cygwin, you can have
this problem with the cygwin version of git - all on it's lonesome!]

I can't help with naming, BTW, since I called the config variable
"core.ramsay-stat". :-P

> 
> I do not offhand know if such a loose mode is too simple and make it
> excessively risky, though.

I suspect it would be fine ... *however*, I never sent my patch because
I didn't think there would be many idiots^H^H^H^H^H^H pioneers like me! :-D

ATB,
Ramsay Jones