Re: [PATCH] Make git-diff-tree indicate when it flushes

[Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org>]

Junio C Hamano writes:

> I am not quite sure exactly what you are trying to achieve, but
> one trivial way is not giving -s perhaps?

I'm asking git-diff-tree which of a given set of commits affect any of
a set of paths, so that gitk can highlight the ones that do.
Furthermore I want to be able to use the git-diff-tree process for
multiple sets of commit IDs.

If I don't use -s, then I will get lines starting with a ":" after the
commit IDs of the commits that do affect the set of paths I specified.
That means I get a definite indication for all except the last commit
I send.  For the last commit I still don't know whether the absence of
any ":" lines means that the commit doesn't affect the set of paths,
or that git-diff-tree is being slow.  So I still need something like
the patch I sent.

I could get the indication I want (with or without -s) if I close the
pipe going to the git-diff-tree process.  But then the process will
exit, and I want it to stay around so that I don't have to pay the
fork/exec and startup time of git-diff-tree next time (which will be
when the user scrolls the commit list window or asks to move to the
next highlighted commit).

Thus, --always (with or without -s) doesn't quite do what I need.

Paul.