Re: cvs 1.11.2 rdiff fails with binary files

[Larry Jones]

Derek Robert Price writes:
> 
> Do you have a good reason we shouldn't allow this, other than it isn't 
> accompanied by appropriate test cases and maybe documentation?  It seems 
> to me that there isn't any good reason for rdiff to fail this way.  It 
> would seem to me to be best to match the diff behavior here.

I don't necessarily object to the principle, but I'm not so sure about
the mechanism.  It seems to me that it would be better to detect the
message from diff (like patch_file in update.c does) rather than just
punting any binary file (some binary files *are* diffable, after all).

> Also, do you know of any issues where rdiff behavior intentionally 
> differs from that of diff?  I fixed diff some time ago to generate 
> proper patches, so it seems to me that any behavior differences should 
> perhaps be merged as much as possible in the vein of tag & rtag.  If you 
> don't know the answer off of the top of your head, don't worry about it, 
> of course.  I should get around to reading the source later.

Not off the top of my head, other than the significantly different
command line parsing.  I think merging patch.c into diff.c and unifying
as much code as possible would be a very good thing.  I have mixed
feelings about unifying the command lines.  On the one hand, it would be
handy to have a real rdiff that accepts all the diff options, but there
are conflicts with the existing patch (aka rdiff) options which are
themselves quite useful.

-Larry Jones

I think we need to change the rules. -- Calvin