Re: [PATCH] grep: provide pathspecs/patterns via file or stdin

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
To: Emily Shaffer <emilyshaffer@google.com>
Cc: git@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] grep: provide pathspecs/patterns via file or stdin
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 11:24:15 +0900	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <xmqq1ru08x80.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20191122011646.218346-1-emilyshaffer@google.com> (Emily Shaffer's message of "Thu, 21 Nov 2019 17:16:46 -0800")

Emily Shaffer <emilyshaffer@google.com> writes:

> Teach 'git grep' how to receive pathspecs via file, and add convenience
> flags for receiving pathspecs or patterns via stdin.

When I invented the terms "pathspec", "refspec", etc. for this
project, I meant them to be collective nouns.  A pathspec is a set
of pathspec elements, each of which is usually given as a separate
argument on the command line.  So "Read pathspec from file" is good
(not "Read pathspecs from file").

Are you aware of the am/pathspec-from-file topic that has been
cooking for a while by now?

I do not necessarily agree with the second rationale why many
commands may want to learn this option given in that series, but do
agree with the first one.  A lot of times running underlying "git"
command multiple times via xargs invocation can mean quite different
thing from giving a large pathspec to a single invocation of "git".
But not with "git grep" ;-)  So I'd say this is a second class
target for the pathspec-from-file theme.

Thanks.