Re: [Gnu-arch-users] merge trouble

[Miles Bader]

On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 20:34:58 -0500, Aaron Bentley
<address@hidden> wrote:
> Tom Lord wrote:
> > Will you please elaborate?   Without referring to old conversations
> > we had long ago: what is wrong with the `--forward' option?
> 
> Its granularity is too large.  It either applies the entire patch, or
> ignores the entire patch.  It doesn't just ignore already-applied hunks.
> 
> I'm going by what ddaa said.  I haven't tested it, but I thought there
> was consensus.

That's my memory too.

I think it really, really, sucks that patch works this way, but it
does.  I can only imagine that when this option was added, many, many
years, ago, it was assumed that people would examine the results
--forward to make sure things were OK afterwards -- for instance, note
that it saves the omitted patches in .rej files.

I will note that in my non-arch usage, I've used patch --forward quite
often, and never been bitten by this behavior, but it's entirely
possible that I've simply been lucky, and I agree that it's just too
dangerous to use in a system where people want to complex and merges.

I suppose if tla is going to continue to use the standard patch
command, it could do some sort of horrible kludgey thing with
--forward by examining the results of patch, splitting up
--forward-generated .rej files and trying to reapply them..... gack.

-Miles
-- 
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.