Re: diff format
Josh MacDonald (jmacd@CS.Berkeley.EDU)
Thu, 25 Feb 1999 20:38:27 -0800
Quoting Larry McVoy (lm@bitmover.com):
> : In earlier discussions you've expressed a distaste for the xdelta file
> : format, but now you can't justify it anymore. Can you comment on this?
> : It seems like you've changed your operational model.
> :
> : You begin by saying that you want context diffs, but that now you intend
> : to use diff -n for transmission.
>
> Yup, you're right and you raise some good points. There is no reason
> why the diff -n stuff couldn't use xdelta instead, in fact, that would
> probably be a far more compact answer.
>
> : That's because (I suspect) you can't guarantee a patch's idempotency
> : with contextual information. You can't guarantee much with only a patch,
> : but since you also record a patch's parent version the diff format is
> : unimportant.
>
> Yes, this is all true. If you want to talk about having BitKeeper use
> xdelta as a transmission format, I'd be very open to that, I think it
> is a great idea.
Xdelta's license is the same as diffutils, if you were already executing
diff then it would be straightforward to replace the commands, or perhaps
allow several patch formats.
-josh
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