Re: Command-line interface thoughts

[Michael Nahas <mike.nahas@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 12:03 AM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> Michael Nahas <mike.nahas@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I think NEXT and WTREE should be like tree objects, not commits, so I
>> would argue that "git show NEXT" should show what it shows for a tree.
>
> So what is the definition of such a "tree" during a conflicted merge?

Good question.  You've been asking it a lot.  I answered it later in the email.

> The traditional definition is "such a state cannot be expressed as a
> tree". You are free to define it the same way, or for NEXT to be more
> useful than status quo, come up with a better definition.
>
>> My thought is that NEXT should only represent those changing files
>> that have been resolved.  So, NEXT would be HEAD plus the files in
>> Stage0.  So, "git diff HEAD NEXT" would print out the changes in
>> Stage0.

(during a conflicted merge...)
"NEXT would be HEAD plus the files in Stage0".

That is the tree.  HEAD plus the resolved files.

> That would mean conflicted files will all be shown as removed, or
> unchanged?  Either would be more confusing.

Conflicted files would be shown as unchanged in NEXT.

"diff NEXT HEAD" == changes in resolved files
"diff WTREE NEXT" == changes in conflicted files
"diff WTREE HEAD" == all changes.

That makes a lot of sense to me.  Those are the three different
changesets I'd want to see and those are the logical commands using
NEXT and WTREE to see them.

I _believe_ but don't know for sure that that _is_ the current behavior for:

"diff --cached HEAD" and
"diff --cached"
"diff HEAD"

If it is the current behavior, I don't see how it could be more
confusing.  It's exactly the same amount of confusing ... with a more
regular syntax, IMHO.


Another way to think about this:  If you had a conflicted merge and
someone allowed you to create the next commit with a command "git
commit --force", what would you expect to be in the created commit?
Wouldn't it be only the resolved files?  The files in Stage0?  The
files in WTREE have the "<<<<</=====/>>>>>" blocks in them - would you
want to commit those?  No.  For those files, you'd prefer the versions
you already had in HEAD.

Mike