From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH/RFC] Add [] as an alias for a reference to the empty
 tree
Date: Sat, 8 May 2010 11:07:31 -0500
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Cc: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>,
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To: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
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Junio C Hamano wrote:

> The reason I am not interested in the feature
> is because I don't see much value in running "git diff EMPTY <anything>".
> Perhaps "git archive" might be what the user really wants to find.

I suspect the goal was to use a tool such as checkpatch, or
get_maintainer without -f.  An implementation using git archive should
still work (with the help of a tar diff-ing program with the EMPTY
feature ;-)), but as UI that might be less discoverable than building
it into git diff.

Personally, I liked both the

  git diff $(</dev/null git hash-object -t tree --stdin) $rev

and

  git diff --root $rev

suggestions.  That may be from a warped sense of aesthetics.

Cheers,
Jonathan