Re: [PATCH 6/7] builtin/describe.c: describe a blob

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

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

> The reason why we say "-ish" is "Yes we know v2.15.0 is *NOT* a
> commit object, we very well know it is a tag object, but because we
> allow it to be used in a context that calls for a commit object, we
> mark that use context as 'this accepts commit-ish, not just
> commit'".

Having said all that, there is a valid case in which we might want
to say "blob-ish".

To review, X-ish is the word we use when the command wants to take
an X, but tolerates a lazy user who gives a Y, which is *NOT* X,
without bothering to add ^{X} suffix, i.e. Y^{X}.  In such a case,
the command takes not just X but takes X-ish because it takes a Y
and converts it internally to an X to be extra nice.

When the command wants to take a blob, but tolerates something else
and does "^{blob}" internally, we can say it takes "blob-ish".
Technically that "something else" could be an annotated tag that
points at a blob object, without any intervening commit or tree (I
did not check if the "describe <blob>" code in this thread handles
this, though).

But because it is not usually done to tag a blob directly, it would
probably be not worth to say "blob-ish" in the document and cause
readers to wonder in what situation something that is not a blob can
be treated as if it were a blob.  It does feel like we would be
pursuing technical correctness too much and sacrificing the readability
of the document, at least to me, and a bad trade-off.