> Another example of where this ordering can be an issue is Linus'
> infamous editing of unified diffs before he applies them to his
> tree. That is a problem because the diffs represent the events
> (deltas) made by someone else. When Linus edits those diffs, that's
> a new event. If he applies the modified diffs before applying the
> pristine diffs, then when you ask "are my diffs in the tree?" the
> answer will be "no" because your diffs aren't in the tree. What is
> in the tree is your diffs plus Linus' changes, *as one delta*. And
> that delta is different than the one delta you made in your tree.
> So how do we get around this? The correct set of changes is
> whatever you did plus whatever Linus did as two distinct events.
> But Linus is in a hurry, so he wants to *think* that he can just
> edit the diffs and apply them.
> So I'll make a little tool, maybe we can call the "linustool",
> which lets him hack on the diffs and then applies them for him. But
> what it really does is save away a copy of the diffs, get the
> (possibly hacked) diffs from Linux when he says "apply", diff the
> diffs, if they are changed, apply the first set as your changes,
> and then apply the mods to that set as his change. It sounds
> complicated and I'm sure it will be a little dicey, but I'm also
> sure I can build that tool.
> So everyone is happy - Linus gets to work the way he wants and we
> can still preserve the invariants required to have a distributed
> source base.
> If this is clear as mud, you're welcome to send me mail with
> questions or if the list can stand it, we can discuss it here.
Maybe I'm just super-dense or something, but...
Q. Why is a tool like that needed? Surely one can simply produce a
copy of the tree as it exists after one's own diff is applied,
and a separate copy of the tree as released by Linus, and just
diff one against the other? It's not exactly hard...
Best wishes from Riley.
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