Re: rdiff

[Derek Robert Price]

Paul Edwards wrote:

> "Larry Jones" <lawrence.jones@eds.com> wrote in message 
> news:mailman.5509.1051907696.21513.bug-cvs@gnu.org...
>  
>
> > > Is it possible to get rdiff to do a simple diff, the same way
> > > that "diff" does by default, rather than a context diff?  I've
> > > never found a way to do that.
> > >      
> > No, it's not.  Rdiff is intended for making patches and is thus much
> > less flexible than regular diff.
> >    
>
> Ok.  But the other thing rdiff is used for is for people who
> want to see the differences between two releases, without
> actually having to check out the entire release into a working
> directory (which they may not even have space for).
>
> The other advantage rdiff has is that if two releases have
> different version numbers, but that is just a historical anomaly,
> there are no actual code changes, rdiff will not report any
> difference, while diff will show an "empty" change (which
> is usually of no interest to anyone).
>
> Anyway, thanks for letting me know.
>
> BFN.  Paul.
>  

Parallel operation would suggest that rdiff would behave mostly like 
diff in the same way that rlog, rannotate, and rtag behave mostly like 
their local counterparts.  Since I fixed `cvs diff' to prepare proper 
patches some time ago, provided `-uN' is supplied, perhaps rdiff should 
accept all the diff options but default to `-uN' now?

I've never verified the empty change behavior, but perhaps diff 
shouldn't be displaying empty changes either.

Regardless, I don't have time to do all this myself.  :)

Patches gratefully accepted!  Test cases and new issues welcome as well.

Derek

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