Re: [Quilt-dev] [OT] 'headers' in patches

[Jean Delvare]

Hi Jerome,

> I've seen that one embed a description header in patches. E.g. it's
> used by Linux developers to describe and sign their work.
> 
> The patch man states
> 
>        patch  tries  to  skip  any leading garbage, apply the diff,
> and then skip any trailing garbage.  Thus you could feed an article or
> message containing a diff listing to patch, and it should work. [..]
> 
> I am wondering:
> - are this description and the lines that follow the official
> documentation of the patch format?

The manual page obviously documents the implementation of "patch" you
are using, so I don't think we can call it "official documentation".
However, the POSIX specification [1] for a "patch" utility says roughly
the same:

"The patch file shall contain zero or more lines of header information
followed by one or more patches."

Note that the POSIX specification doesn't seem to support trailing
garbage (and quilt doesn't either).

> -.are there any known issues with quilt dealing with patches
> containing a description? In particular, is there a way for me to lose
> them?

Quilt handles leading comments in patch files just fine, and will
preserve them on refresh. Additionally, it can insert and update a
diffstat output in the header if kindly asked to do so.

[1] http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/patch.html

-- 
Jean Delvare