Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Linus Torvalds <address@hidden> Re: log-buf-len dynamic

[Andrea Arcangeli]

On Sat, Oct 04, 2003 at 03:18:14PM +0900, Miles Bader wrote:
> Andrea Arcangeli <address@hidden> writes:
> > > The much more common case is applying a patch from a non-BK-using
> > > developer (still the majority, I think) -- patches represent moved files
> > > as a big delete plus a big add.
> > 
> > With tla there's no reason for not using tla. When they send a patch I
> > simply add an automation in mutt that autoreply asking for a patchset
> > with an howto. if tla is better than patch and diff, then people will
> > use it and the problem will be void.
> 
> I think patches will be around for a long time; the central developers
> may stop using them, but such things don't go away quickly.

yes. Though the majority of patches don't involve renames.

> > Again, even in this case, I see taglines as a workaround, people
> > shouldn't send patches by email anymore, they should send patchsets,
> 
> I wasn't talking about taglines, BTW I was talking about my
> `tla-update-ids' script, which among other things handles automatic
> detection of renamed explicitly-tagged files.  So you can apply a patch,
> run the script, and it will do the `tla move/add/remove's for you.
> 
> It occurs to me that perhaps it should have a `--no-add' option for
> people like you that don't want to tag every file considered source.

that sounds a nice idea, thanks. Additionally I'd like to shortly review
the changes it's doing before running the tla commands.  To avoid the
`cp x.c x.c.org; rm x.c` to be mistaken for a legitimate rename w/o me
noticing about it.

While the update-ids script is sure a nice thing to have, when big
changes are involved (like file renames) asking for a better format than
'patch/diff' sounds reasonable to me.

I remeber Linus asking Andre to send him a script, not a patch, to
create drivers/ide and to fill it moving files from drivers/block to
drivers/ide, somewhere in between 2.2 and 2.4. Exactly to avoid applying
absoltuely unreadable and very huge patches (huge because they duplicate
info). This just shows how the 'patch/diff' is unusable anyways for those
sort of changes, it's not that patch doesn't work w/o taglines, patch
never worked, and it can't work, for these sort of changes.

At the time, there was nothing better than sending a script doing the
moves, along with a patch making the changes to the renamed files later.
Now, thanks to the metadata stored in the SCM, we can effectively ask
the SCM to generate a readable ascii armored patchset, that should be
the most friendly format for auditing the changes while reading the
email (without piping the email into another program or whatever, just
plain ascii like we do with patches today).

Andrea - If you prefer relying on open source software, check these links:
            rsync.kernel.org::pub/scm/linux/kernel/bkcvs/linux-2.[45]/
            http://www.cobite.com/cvsps/