Re: diffutils file mode (was Re: [PATCH 5.15 00/37] 5.15.96-rc2 review)

[Andrew Morton]

On Fri, 24 Feb 2023 11:16:52 -0800 Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> But as far as I can tell, GNU diffutils have never actually grown the
> ability to generate those extensions, even though at least the mode
> bit one should be fairly simple (the file rename/copy ones are rather
> more complicated, but those are just a "make diffs more legible and
> compact" convenience thing, unlike the executable bit thing that
> allows for scripts to remain executable).

yeah, irritating.

Can we use git instead of diff?  I tried once, but it didn't work -
perhaps because it didn't like doing stuff outside a git repo.

However, trying it now...

hp2:/home/akpm> mkdir foo
hp2:/home/akpm> cd foo
hp2:/home/akpm/foo> date > a
hp2:/home/akpm/foo> cp a b
hp2:/home/akpm/foo> chmod +x a
hp2:/home/akpm/foo> git diff a b
diff --git a/a b/b              
old mode 100755
new mode 100644