Documentation / technical / api-revision-walking.txton commit Merge branch 'jc/maint-split-diff-metainfo' (bdf6442)
   1revision walking API
   2====================
   3
   4The revision walking API offers functions to build a list of revisions
   5and then iterate over that list.
   6
   7Calling sequence
   8----------------
   9
  10The walking API has a given calling sequence: first you need to
  11initialize a rev_info structure, then add revisions to control what kind
  12of revision list do you want to get, finally you can iterate over the
  13revision list.
  14
  15Functions
  16---------
  17
  18`init_revisions`::
  19
  20        Initialize a rev_info structure with default values. The second
  21        parameter may be NULL or can be prefix path, and then the `.prefix`
  22        variable will be set to it. This is typically the first function you
  23        want to call when you want to deal with a revision list. After calling
  24        this function, you are free to customize options, like set
  25        `.ignore_merges` to 0 if you don't want to ignore merges, and so on. See
  26        `revision.h` for a complete list of available options.
  27
  28`add_pending_object`::
  29
  30        This function can be used if you want to add commit objects as revision
  31        information. You can use the `UNINTERESTING` object flag to indicate if
  32        you want to include or exclude the given commit (and commits reachable
  33        from the given commit) from the revision list.
  34+
  35NOTE: If you have the commits as a string list then you probably want to
  36use setup_revisions(), instead of parsing each string and using this
  37function.
  38
  39`setup_revisions`::
  40
  41        Parse revision information, filling in the `rev_info` structure, and
  42        removing the used arguments from the argument list. Returns the number
  43        of arguments left that weren't recognized, which are also moved to the
  44        head of the argument list. The last parameter is used in case no
  45        parameter given by the first two arguments.
  46
  47`prepare_revision_walk`::
  48
  49        Prepares the rev_info structure for a walk. You should check if it
  50        returns any error (non-zero return code) and if it does not, you can
  51        start using get_revision() to do the iteration.
  52
  53`get_revision`::
  54
  55        Takes a pointer to a `rev_info` structure and iterates over it,
  56        returning a `struct commit *` each time you call it. The end of the
  57        revision list is indicated by returning a NULL pointer.
  58
  59Data structures
  60---------------
  61
  62Talk about <revision.h>, things like:
  63
  64* two diff_options, one for path limiting, another for output;
  65* remaining functions;
  66
  67(Linus, JC, Dscho)