marcin> One question I'd ask is: how important a legible diff is to you? I keep my Org files in Git, too, but if /I/ know what was changed, I just don't care about diff going nuts and I treat it as (more or less) Git's internal implementation detail.
for org, i mostly use git for reviewing changes. it is only one step more sophisticated than saving old and diffing. i have lots of tools for improving diff, but this intermingling problem is a showstopper in some cases, like right now where i have spent months trying to make sense of months of changes to org files that have not been entered into git. i.e. i did not enter every few days as normal. i find reviewing changes to be valuable. every once in a while i discover data corruption or something that i forgot etc. i wonder if diff, or difftastic, could be taught or postprocessed to do merely one thing: try to preserve stuff between "^\\*+ ". that is probably too optimistic, but imagine a --preserve-between option. On 11/21/22, Samuel Wales <samolog...@gmail.com> wrote: > incidentally, if you want empty hunk headers, you can do this at least > in my version of git: > > xfuncname = " " > > but idk why it works and i had had it commented out. > > > On 11/21/22, Samuel Wales <samolog...@gmail.com> wrote: >> p.s. hunk header munging does not unmingle [i.e. group changes by org >> header in magit status buffer diffs] :(. but it is true that what i >> want is some kind of preference given by magit to org entries as >> demarcated by org headings. >> >> idk if what i want is in principle possible or not in standard diff or >> git diff. that is, idk if they could be patched to accept an arg that >> would allow you to specify that org entries should be preserved if >> possible or something like that. >> >> great to know difftastic can in principle be coded to do what i want, >> however. so maybe soetime you could tell git to use. >> >> org hunk headers are rather nice looking. on the other hand, it gets >> the previous header, even if not the parent header. i think this is >> why i had the impression that git was in principle incapable of org >> hunk header text of the type i wanted. but hunk header text is not >> something i use a lot. it's rather nice looking, but in some cases i >> prefer empty hunk headers. >> >> On 11/12/22, Samuel Wales <samolog...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> i have a very old version of Magit, for reasons I won't get into. >>> Fancier diff settings might be differnet or not available. >>> >>> But something drives me crazy. Probably not too Org-related, but it >>> might be. I just want to know why, is all. >>> >>> I have a 24k line org file, and it's not that complex wrt levels. 2 >>> or 3 levels with odd stars only. various types of content. >>> >>> someplace in it, is an entry with a 234-item plain list. if i try to >>> move this entry, and make no other changes, diff goes insane. if i >>> try to refile this entry to a different org file, diff similarly goes >>> insane, with the - part. only that change. >>> >>> ok, what it does is, intersperse or mingle entries. so suppose i want >>> to stage this one tiny little change, namely moving one entry [the one >>> with the large plain list] to a different location in the same file. >>> even if i move it really distantly. >>> >>> i.e. i want to put the - and the + of the move to the staging area in >>> magit. unstaged changes should then not have this file in it at all >>> after the staging operations. >>> >>> then, basically, staged changes will have this move. >>> >>> as a user, i want diff to make this two hunks, a big - and a big +. >>> but diff mingles parts of another entry or entries with this list, so >>> that it is scattered all over the diff. to get the result i want >>> requires tons of intra-hunk stage operations. at best. >>> >>> so, what aspect of diff or org is triggering this kind of behavior? >>> what is it that diff needs to understand about org, or what minimality >>> etc. settings does it want to create a better diff? >>> >>> i know org has lots of similar lines [e.g. planning headers with >>> scheduled dates that are identical]. but still, this is a nontrivial >>> size org file, with no other changes that i made. diff's insanity >>> still occurs even if i move the entry distantly. >>> >>> i am of course aware of histogram, patience, etc. and that git diff >>> has a few experimental choices of options. also long ago i read diff >>> manual with its discussion of end of file beg of file and minimality >>> with --minimal and all that stuff. >>> >>> however, here, though, i am mostly interested in specifically what >>> diff's, or git diff's, or magit's, /deal/ is. in /this/ case. >>> >>> where does it get off doing that? everything else is the same, so why >>> is it keying on the wrong thing? >>> >>> does it think i made the changes as it presents them, or does it go >>> for some other goal like minimality or speed and not really care what >>> i did? is it because it e.g. ignores end or beg of file or so? or is >>> it getting confused by some line? >>> >>> i have of course heard of merge something or others. which presumably >>> tell diff about the structure of files or so. like, the fact that the >>> planning line always follows the header. or perhaps i am imagining >>> this kind of tool. >>> >>> now, whether i can mitigte it is interesting /after/ that. my >>> paleolithic magit version might not be capable, but still. >>> >>> -- >>> The Kafka Pandemic >>> >>> A blog about science, health, human rights, and misopathy: >>> https://thekafkapandemic.blogspot.com >>> >> >> >> -- >> The Kafka Pandemic >> >> A blog about science, health, human rights, and misopathy: >> https://thekafkapandemic.blogspot.com >> > > > -- > The Kafka Pandemic > > A blog about science, health, human rights, and misopathy: > https://thekafkapandemic.blogspot.com > -- The Kafka Pandemic A blog about science, health, human rights, and misopathy: https://thekafkapandemic.blogspot.com
