Xref: utzoo ont.uucp:351 tor.news:113
Newsgroups: ont.uucp,tor.news
Path: utzoo!lsuc!dave
From: dave@lsuc.uucp (David Sherman)
Subject: Re: putting up C alpha news
Reply-To: dave@lsuc.UUCP (David Sherman)
Date: Thu, 7-Jan-88 22:53:45 EST
Summary: patch(1) doesn't require virgin source
Message-ID: <1988Jan7.225347.11334@lsuc.uucp>
Distribution: ont
References: <1988Jan7.191212.9827@utstat.uucp>
Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto

In article <1988Jan7.191212.9827@utstat.uucp> geoff@utstat.uucp writes:
>						B news and
>related politics, one of which is the frequent mandatory patches,
>requiring that you go back to virgin source, apply patches and reapply
>local fixes or policy.

B news has its problems, but this isn't one of them.  The whole
point of patch(1) is that you do NOT need to go back to virgin
source.  I've made a number of minor changes in B news for lsuc,
and whenever I've run patch it's done a good job of finding the
right place to patch (offset N lines).  Occasionally it's trying
to change a line very close to where I've made changes, and fails;
so I get a .rej file and fix it by hand.  Very simple.

If B news patches were posted by reposting the corrected source
instead (all the patches put together are now approximately the
same size as the original distribution), I'd have to keep track
of local patches I'd made.  This way I don't.

I realize you guys don't want to get into a lot of support,
but where changes are appropriate, patch files are a Good Way
to do it.

David Sherman
-- 
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