Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: BUG: extra diff arguments for "tla changes --diffs"]

[Aaron Bentley]

Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > An increased number of context lines can lead to more rejects, because the
> > extreme context boundaries may not match.
>
>
> And that's good if you want to avoid bad patching.

Yes, but it's bad if it prevents good patching.

> > If standard changesets can be generated using whitespace control, the nature
> > of changesets changes.  They're no longer "the difference between this tree
> > and that tree" but "the difference between this tree and this imaginary tree
> > based on that tree".  I think it's worth thinking twice about that.
>
>
> It doesn't matter for cherry picking.
> But yes, it's clearly a bad idea for archives where the changesets need to
> be able to generate the exact same files.  But were's talking about
> `tla changes' i.e. changesets that are not going to be directly added to
> an archive.

No, we're talking about the changeset format.  And given how commonly 
archive changesets are used for cherry-picking, the line's pretty blurry.

> > How is applying a changeset generated with -p "usefully different"?
> > That's exactly the kind of output-format-altering change that has no benefit
> > for applying changesets, but consumes programming and testing resources.
>
>
> Don't know about you, but I do a fair bit of manual application of
> changesets (or at least their rejected parts), 

Yeah, I handle a fair amount of rejects myself.  But it's usually in 
code I wrote recently, so I can't judge the value of -p in output.  But 
it won't make apply-changeset work better, and it will make my life as a 
tool-writer harder.

Aaron
--
Aaron Bentley
Director of Technology
Panometrics, Inc.