alt Hacker NewsFor stuff like commit histories or complex changes, isn't the real power in the tools around the diff (think Git itself, or code review platforms) rather than trying to cram everything into one super-format?
For stuff like commit histories or complex changes, isn't the real power in the tools around the diff (think Git itself, or code review platforms) rather than trying to cram everything into one super-format?
It is. However, first the tools need to be able to grab the necessary information from the diff to, say, locate that file or its metadata in a repository.
Git's diff format contains enough information to do this, but many don't. When this happens, tools like ours (a code review platform) is forced to modify the diff format or otherwise attach information to do these sorts of operations.
We've had to do this enough times, and work around enough inconsistencies and breakages in various SCM-specific diff format variants that we decided to address the problem head-on, pulling our experiences and those of some of the SCM vendors we work with to draft a solution to the problem.