Re: [PATCH v3 1/2] git-merge-file doc: drop "-file" from argument placeholders

["brian m. carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>]

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On 2023-11-02 at 08:53:36, Martin Ågren wrote:
> On Thu, 2 Nov 2023 at 00:53, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> >
> > "brian m. carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net> writes:
> >
> > > From: Martin Ågren <martin.agren@gmail.com>
> > >
> > > `git merge-file` takes three positional arguments. Each of them is
> > > documented as `<foo-file>`. In preparation for teaching this command to
> > > alternatively take three object IDs, make these placeholders a bit more
> >
> > Minor nit.  Don't we want to say "three blob object names"?  Unless
> > we plan to grow this feature into accepting three tree object names,
> > that is.
> 
> Hmm, yeah. Or just "three non-filename arguments". I do wonder: doesn't
> this mean that the second patch could/should possibly move away from the
> notion of "object ID"/`--object-id`? (That's not trying to shift any
> blame from one patch to the other, that's my honest reaction.)

Not specifying an option would make this ambiguous.  What if I have a
file named "e69de29bb2d1d6434b8b29ae775ad8c2e48c5391"?  Is that the
empty blob, or is it that file?  Normally we have ways to disambiguate
this, but those don't work here because of the positional arguments.

> Ah, yes, I thought I recognized this. Quoting your response [1] to v2:
> 
> > I briefly thought about suggesting --blob-id instead of --object-id
> > simply because you'd never want to feed it trees and commits, but
> > the error message from read_mmblob() the users would get mentions
> > 'blob' to signal that non-blob objects are unwelcome, so the name of
> > the optionwould be OK as-is.
> 
> Maybe you having a similar reaction a second time makes this smell a bit
> more?

I think the name is fine.  We don't typically use the phrase "blob ID"
anywhere, but we do say "object ID".  We'd need to say "--blob", but
I'm not sure that's an improvement, and I fear it may be less
understandable.
-- 
brian m. carlson (he/him or they/them)
Toronto, Ontario, CA

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