Re: [PATCH 1/2] format-patch: fix dashdash usage

[Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 1:11 AM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> Is it clearer what I meant?  More importantly, did I get the details
> right?

Yeah, I guess so.

> Hmm, I have not seen a clear "yes, because..." yet.

I'll repeat:
Not everyone has clean branches only with pertinent patches.

That's why revision filtering options make sense.

> For one thing, Documentation/git-format-patch.txt does not even hint that
> you can give pathspecs.  builtin_format_patch_usage[] doesn't, either.  As
> I wrote the initial version of format-patch I can say with some authority
> that use with pathspecs were never meant to be supported---if it works, it
> works by accident, giving long enough rope to users to potentially cause
> themselves harm.
>
> I am inclined to think that we shouldn't encourage use of pathspecs (just
> like we never encouraged use of options like --name-only that never makes
> sense in the context of the command) but I am undecided if we also should
> forbid the use of pathspecs (just like we did for --name-only recently).

How about 'git format-patch --full-diff'? Isn't that a valid way to
filter patches just like --author, --grep, and so on?

-- 
Felipe Contreras