Subject: Re: Bug report: .gitattributes: -diff Unset causes files to be reported as binaries
Newsgroups: gmane.comp.version-control.git
Date: 2009-07-02 11:29:04 GMT (36 weeks, 8 hours and 15 minutes ago)
On Thursday 02 July 2009 13:12:28 Paolo Bonzini wrote: > >> So as far as I can see, git is behaving exactly as it is supposed to. > >> Maybe you can be more specific about what effect you were trying to > >> achieve by setting gitattributes in the first place? > > > > To exclude it in diffs, such as from `git show`. Take the case where you > > have a grammar file for a parser and generate a source file from it(or > > any similar scenario); the diff for the generated source file is not of > > interest and is just noisy when read as part of a patch. This applies to > > all kinds of generated files. However, this doesn't mean that the file > > should be treated as a binary, and what practicalities that implies. > > I am not sure it is a good idea, but you can do this with > > FILE diff=/bin/true > > > If -diff affects whether a file is treated as a binary, as opposed > > whether it's diff'ed, it would imo make sense to call it -binary. > > No, diff affects how a file is diffed. The particular setting "-diff" > diffs the file as if it was binary. Aha, then we're maybe at conclusion; if -diff doesn't cause the files to be treated as binaries, then the phrase "Binary files a/file.txt and b/file.txt differ" is wrong, it shouldn't read "Binary files", but maybe rather "The files". Cheers, Frans