patch croaks on subdirectories

[news]

Reply To: pcolby at robbie.prime.com

While trying to update perl 2.0 I ran into the following problem with patch.
(note that perl 2.0 has several subdirectories: x2p, t, lib, eg, ...)

Any time the Index or the filenames called for a file in one of the
subdirectories, Patch would ask me "File to patch:"
OK so far, BUT in the case of Makefile.SH and x2p/Makefile.SH (ie, a different
Makefile.SH in the main directory and a subdirectory), patch attempted to
patch the original Makefile.SH when the x2p/Makefile.SH was called for. Of
course, the patch would fail and the rejects would end up in Makefile.SH.rej.

This first happened with patch#4, I didn't notice it until I had applied
patch#8 (the failure messages go by so fast I didn't register them) and at
the time I couldn't figure out the problem. Since Makefile.SH looked ok,
I just deleted the .rej file and went merrily on. (Bad practice you say? I
agree but since I had 14 patches to install to perl + patches to install to
rn + real work to do, ...).  Suffice it to say, I ran into the same problem
with patch#14. I didn't figure out the real problem until I had restored the
original Makefile.SH that came with the source posting and tried to reapply
only those portions of the patches that touched Makefile.SH or x2p/Makefile.SH.

The result of all this is to ask if this is a bug or a feature in patch. I
would think that there ought to be some way of informing patch about
subdirectories without having to '+ -d' your way to glory for a large diff.

	Peter Colby

PS: I suppose that I can volunteer to attempt to fix the problem but it will
take some time for me to understand the implications of any solution I come
up with.  Larry???

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