Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!steinmetz!vdsvax!barnett From: barnett@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com (Bruce G. Barnett) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: context diff and patch Message-ID: <4649@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com> Date: 19 Jun 88 11:07:27 GMT References: <954@fig.bbn.com> <8122@brl-smoke.ARPA> Reply-To: barnett@steinmetz.ge.com (Bruce G. Barnett) Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY Lines: 38 In article <8122@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) ) writes: |I would trust NEITHER "ed" nor "patch" when modifications have been made |to the original code. "patch" may be somewhat more likely to succeed in |such a case, but it obviously cannot be guaranteed to work right. Still, I would trust diff -c and patch to install 95% to 99.9999% of the patches correctly (with the rejects documented). If I were given: 1. non-pristine source code 2. Non-context diff output (assume large number of patches) My choices would be: A. Have patch munge up the code so bad I would never know if the patches were installed correctly B. spend hours, or days applying patches manually C. throwing the whole mess away. I usually choose option C. If someone doesn't know how to provide useful patches, then they are incompetent, and the program would probably be more trouble than it is worth. I have installed hundreds of USENET programs, and I don't have the time to fix programs that cannot be upgraded using patch. I left out one of the options: D) send context-diff.c sources to the author of the patch. I strongly suggest that context diff and patch be provided with every Un*x system shipped. If the wizards@research don't provide a context diff program that patch can use, then they are typifying the "ivory tower" syndrome. -- Bruce G. Barnett uunet!steinmetz!barnett