Re: CVS Update Behaviour

[Noel Yap]

--- "Greg A. Woods" <address@hidden> wrote:
> "patch" has been a "standard" tool in unix
> development for nearly two
> decades now.  Prior to that the commonly used tool
> that can do the exact
> same job with only slightly less success and using
> the exact same tool
> to create the diff, was called 'ed'.  It's been
> around for over three
> decades now.  Time to crawl out from under your rock
> and get with the
> program Paul!

Greg, your experience is not the norm.  Most
developers, possibly sadly, aren't familiar with the
whole gamut of available commands.

Furthermore, to do a proper merge, one needs three
files.  I think patch is incomplete since all the
information between the ancestor revision and the
current file is completely lost.  One of the first
lines in the output of "man patch" hints at this: 

    patch - apply a diff file to an original

Since, when merging, one doesn't apply a diff file to
_the original_, patch isn't really the ideal tool to
do it.  One could use diff3, but if that were true,
why couldn't CVS do it itself?

Noel

Noel

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