ANanother-acct·Sep 11, 2024
> Because it was under 1000 layers of other bullshit
Not only because of that.
git-range-diff, while absolutely a killer feature, is a relatively new feature of git as well (a bit similarly to "git rebase --update-refs" -- which I've just learned of from you <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41511241>, so thanks for that :)).
Namely, git-range-diff existed out-of-tree as "git tbdiff" <https://github.com/trast/tbdiff> originally. It was ported to git proper in August 2018 <https://github.com/git/git/commit/d9c66f0b5bfd>; so it's not a feature people could have used "15 years ago".
(FWIW, before git-range-diff was a thing, and also before I had learned about git-tbdiff, I had developed a silly little script for myself, for doing nearly the same. Several other people did the same for themselves, too. Incremental review was vital for most
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serious maintainers, so it was a no-brainer to run "git format-patch" on two versions of a series, and colordiff those. The same workflow is essential for comparing a backport to the original (upstream) version of the series. Of course my stupid little script couldn't recognize reorderings of patches, or a subject line rewrite while the patch body stayed mostly the same.)