Re: emacs-21.1-21.2.diff: "the top of the Emacs source tree" is imprecise.

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Alan Mackenzie <none@example.invalid>
> Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.bug
> Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 19:56:21 +0000
> 
> I recently downloaded the file emacs-21.1-21.2.diff from www.gnu.org.
> The instructions in this file say "cd to the top of the emacs source tree
> and then type 'sh <this file>'.
> 
> What exactly does "the top of the emacs source tree mean"?

It means either the directory where you have the src, lisp, etc,
lwlib, and other subdirectories created by unpacking the Emacs
distribution, or its parent.

Assuming that you unpacked Emacs 21.1 into /foo/bar, unpacking creates
/foo/bar/emacs-21.1.  The scripts assumes that you invoke it either
from /foo/bar or from /foo/bar/emacs-21.1 (in the former case, it
chdir's into emacs-21.1 before proceeding).

> My directory structure starts off /usr/src/packages/BUILD/, and directly
> under this I have emacs-21.1 and emacs-21.2.  I created emacs-21.2 by
> cloning emacs-21.1.
> 
> I then copied emacs-21.1-21.2.diff to /usr/..../BUILD/emacs-21.2/ and
> attempted sh emacs-21.1-21.2.diff.

That should have worked, AFAIK.

> It didn't work.  More precisely, it didn't find all the files it needed
> to patch, and prompted me to tell it where to find them.

Please tell the details: what files didn't it find, and what was the
precise text of the prompt.

> I think that the phrase ".. the top of emacs source tree .." is too
> vague.

The fact is you succeeded to figure it out correctly.  But I'll see
how the wording could be made less ambiguous, thanks for pointing that
out.