Re: Bash patches format

[Marty E. Plummer]

On Tue, May 29, 2018 at 11:05:45AM -0400, Chet Ramey wrote:
> On 5/19/18 9:46 AM, Marty E. Plummer wrote:
> > Greetings,
> > 
> > In doing some research into ways to better improve the gentoo ebuild qa,
> > I ran across the fact that the official bash patches are provided as
> > -p0, context diffs.
> > 
> > I was hoping I could convince you to convert to -p1, unified diffs, such
> > as are produced by diff -u or git format-patch, for the following
> > reasons.
> > 
> > 1. <opinion> unified diffs are easier to size up at a glance as compared
> > to an equivalent context diff; the two following snippets cover the same
> > data/changes, but the unified diff is easier to read at a glance:
> 
> Interesting. I find the opposite to be true.
> 
Fair, but as I stated at the start, pure opinion.
> > 2. unified diffs are, generally speaking, smaller than an equivalent
> > context diff, as in hunks where lines are added and removed or changed
> > (instead of just adding or removing lines), the hunk is copied twice in
> > a context diff. Depending on the general composition of a patch, an
> > equivalent unified diff is about 1/3 smaller than the same context diff.
> 
> Since we're talking a few thousand characters here, this isn't much of
> a difference or savings.
> 
Also fair and true, but I thought it was a valid point to make so I did.
> > 3. A lot of downstream consumers are already taking these patches and
> > converting them to -p1 unified diffs in their source repos already, or,
> > barring that, have to make explicit exceptions to the 'norm' for their
> > packaging/buildscripts.
> 
> They have to do this anyway, since most of the distributions use their
> own source base that is nearly, but not quite, identical to bash as
> shipped.
> 
Well, the patches are identical, excepting the format difference.
> If people are willing to do the conversion between patch formats for their
> own purposes, more power to them. I don't see any compelling reason to
> change the format I use.
> 
Could I at least convince you to start doing -p1, if not unified?
> -- 
> ``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
>                ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
> Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/