>> At some point in the past few years, patch stopped replacing files which
>> were not modified due to all hunks failing to apply. This breaks the
>> following pattern:
[snip]
>that's when emacs is configured not to break hard links; the same would
>happen if you edit any other file that patch hasn't modified.
Which is my intention if I'm editing a file I know to be hardlinked (and
that's why I have emacs configured in that manner. The problem is:
>> ...because patch leaves the original (hardlinked) file untouched when it
>> detects that all hunks have failed. This is particularly annoying since
>> it means patch's behavior is not consistent with respect to hard links:
because I expect any file visited by patch to be consistently either
modified in place (preserving hard inks) or replaced (breaking hard
links). If the intent is to change patch's behavior to modify files in
place, that's fine; I can change my processes accordingly. However, the
current behavior is not consistent, so yes, it is a bug.
--Andrew Church
http://achurch.org/
