Re: is there a reason pre-commit.sample uses "git diff-index"?

["Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday@crashcourse.ca>]

On Thu, 31 May 2018, Duy Nguyen wrote:

> On Thu, May 31, 2018 at 6:38 PM, Robert P. J. Day <rpjday@crashcourse.ca> wrote:
> >
> >   was going over some hooks and writing some tutorials for some of
> > the commit-related, client-side hooks, and was wondering (perhaps
> > stupidly) why the pre-commit.sample hook uses, as its last line:
> >
> >   exec git diff-index --check --cached $against --
> >            ^^^^^^^^^^
> >
> > as in, could this not be done equivalently with just git diff, not
> > git diff-index? i just did a quick test and it seems to do the
> > same thing, but i've never taken a close look at git diff-index
> > before so i may just be clueless about some important distinction.
>
> git diff-index is "plumbing", designed for writing scripts. "git
> diff" on the other hand is for users and its behavior may change
> even if it breaks backward compatibility.

  ah, this was a philosophical underpinning i was unaware of. i see
occasional explanations of git porcelain versus plumbing, but i don't
recall anyone simply stating that the plumbing is meant to have a
long-term stability that is not guaranteed for the porcelain.

  in any event, this does mean that, stability issues aside, "git
diff" would apparently have worked just fine for that hook.

rday

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Robert P. J. Day                                 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
                  http://crashcourse.ca/dokuwiki

Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
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