[PATCH v2 0/2] "diff --no-index" updates

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Here are a few patches to scratch my itches in "diff --no-index" I
have had for quite some time, but didn't feel strong enough to fix
them myself so far.

The first one is to make "diff File Directory" (and "diff Directory
File") more useful by aligning its behaviour with more mainstream
"diff" implementations.  We used to complain that one is a file and
the other is a directory and died without doing anything useful.
Instead, we pretend as if the user asked to compare "diff File
Directory/File" (or vice versa), which is what GNU diff does.

The second one on the other hand is to make it behave more like the
normal "git diff" when comparing two directories, when one directory
has a path as a file while the other directory has the same path as
a directory.  GNU diff punts and says "File D1/path is a regular
file while file D2/path is a directory" in such a case, and that is
what "diff --no-index" does, too, but when the normal "git diff"
compares two such trees, we show a removal of the file and creations
of all the files in the directory (or vice versa).  With this patch,
we teach "diff --no-index" codepath to do the same, which would be
more in line with the spirit of "diff --no-index", which is to make
"git diff" goodies available to people who compare paths outside
control of any git repository.

Junio C Hamano (2):
  diff-no-index: DWIM "diff D F" into "diff D/F F"
  diff: align D/F handling of "diff --no-index" with that of normal Git

 diff-no-index.c          | 66 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--
 t/t4053-diff-no-index.sh | 34 +++++++++++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 98 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

-- 
2.3.4-475-g3180e2e