context diff and patch

[Bruce G. Barnett]

In article <8122 at brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn at brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
|I would trust NEITHER "ed" nor "patch" when modifications have been made
|to the original code.  "patch" may be somewhat more likely to succeed in
|such a case, but it obviously cannot be guaranteed to work right.

Still, I would trust diff -c and patch to install 95% to 99.9999% of the
patches correctly (with the rejects documented).

If I were given:
	1. non-pristine source code
	2. Non-context diff output (assume large number of patches)
My choices would be:
	A. Have patch munge up the code so bad I would never know if 
	   the patches were installed correctly
	B. spend hours, or days applying patches manually
	C. throwing the whole mess away.

I usually choose option C. If someone doesn't know how to provide
useful patches, then they are incompetent, and the program would
probably be more trouble than it is worth.

I have installed hundreds of USENET programs, and I don't have the
time to fix programs that cannot be upgraded using patch.

I left out one of the options:

	D) send context-diff.c sources to the author of the patch.

I strongly suggest that context diff and patch be provided with
every Un*x system shipped.

If the wizards at research don't provide a context diff program that
patch can use, then they are typifying the "ivory tower" syndrome.


-- 
	Bruce G. Barnett 	<barnett at ge-crd.ARPA> <barnett at steinmetz.UUCP>
				uunet!steinmetz!barnett