question on generating a patch
I read the FAQ and SubmittingPatches, but how best to generate a patch that moves a file from on dir to another? diff -urNP makes the patch a lot longer than it seems like it should be... (fortunately it's just a short header file)
Is there a better way?
regards,
David
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David L. Parsley Network Administrator Roanoke College - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [email protected] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
[David L. Parsley]
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I read the FAQ and SubmittingPatches, but how best to generate a patch that moves a file from on dir to another? diff -urNP makes the patch a lot longer than it seems like it should be...
A major weakness of the 'patch' command -- you cannot gracefully move or rename files. Larry Wall saw this years ago and invented a hybrid sort of patch that runs as a shar-like shell script, moving things around before actually applying itself as a patch. But most people, including linux-kernel, don't use lwall's patch+shar format.
- If it's a fairly small file anyway, just use 'diff -urN' and don't worry about it.
- If it's a large file or several files, or if you are making significant changes to said files besides moving them, you should probably list two separate steps: first, describe the rearrangement, perhaps as a series of 'mv' commands; second, give us a patch against the new arrangement.
Either way, you need to make it clear what changes, if any, have been made to a particular file "in transit". With just 'diff -urN' and no explanation, it is hard to tell one way or the other.
Peter
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