This Aha belongs in #501: create outline-oriented git diff <https://github.com/leo-editor/leo-editor/issues/501>, but I want to talk about this here so that a wider audience will be sure to see it.
The Aha: *don't use git to do the diff!* Instead, use git to "deliver" the files to be diffed. We will usually want to diff files in an open outline to some older version of those files. *For external files created by @file* 1. Use git diff --patch to generate a patch, and then *apply the patch* to generate the *old* file. Alternatively, use git show <https://stackoverflow.com/questions/888414/> to copy the old file into a temp file. 2. Create a "helper outline" (a hidden commander) as is done by Leo's existing file-compare-leo-files command. *Once we read the old file into an outline, node-by-node comparisons are quick and easy.* The code in EditFileCommandsClass.compareAnyTwoFiles shows how. In particular, detecting inserted, deleted or moved nodes is a snap. *For external files generated by @clean* The process is much the same. We use git to deliver the old external file (*without *sentinels). Using the open outline, a variant of the Mulder-Ream update algorithm will generate the old file *with* sentinels. Now we can proceed as with external files generated from @file. *Note*: all diffs between files generated from @clean are "relative" to the presently open outline. That is, lines from such external files can only be assigned to nodes using a particular, given, outline. I speculate that using the presently open outline will suffice in just about all cases. *Summary* The Aha: use git diff or git checkout *only *to deliver the *complete *old files. The git-diff command will read old files into a hidden helper outline. Thereafter, node by node comparisons will be quick and easy. As with file-compare-leo-files, the new code will use difflib only to diff changed nodes* one node at at time*. This will be extremely fast I expect the new diff commands can be completed in a matter of days. Edward <https://github.com/leo-editor/leo-editor/issues/501> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to leo-editor+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to leo-editor@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/leo-editor. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
