diff --relative: output paths as relative to the current subdirectory
This adds --relative option to the diff family. When you start
from a subdirectory:
$ git diff --relative
shows only the diff that is inside your current subdirectory,
and without $prefix part. People who usually live in
subdirectories may like it.
There are a few things I should also mention about the change:
- This works not just with diff but also works with the log
family of commands, but the history pruning is not affected.
In other words, if you go to a subdirectory, you can say:
$ git log --relative -p
but it will show the log message even for commits that do not
touch the current directory. You can limit it by giving
pathspec yourself:
$ git log --relative -p .
This originally was not a conscious design choice, but we
have a way to affect diff pathspec and pruning pathspec
independently. IOW "git log --full-diff -p ." tells it to
prune history to commits that affect the current subdirectory
but show the changes with full context. I think it makes
more sense to leave pruning independent from --relative than
the obvious alternative of always pruning with the current
subdirectory, which would break the symmetry.
- Because this works also with the log family, you could
format-patch a single change, limiting the effect to your
subdirectory, like so:
$ cd gitk-git
$ git format-patch -1 --relative
911f1eb
But because that is a special purpose usage, this option will
never become the default, with or without repository or user
preference configuration. The risk of producing a partial
patch and sending it out by mistake is too great if we did
so.
- This is inherently incompatible with --no-index, which is a
bolted-on hack that does not have much to do with git
itself. I didn't bother checking and erroring out on the
combined use of the options, but probably I should.
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>