Curtis L. Olson wrote:
> Martin Dressler writes:
> > I'm now working on Ground view mode and I just go through code to
> > fully understand the problem. I find some small nearly cosmetic
> > bugs. What is the best way to rapair them. Should I make diff of
> > affected code or should I tar the whole file. Should I repair only
> > one bug in one patch. Or could I make all changes and tar them in
> > one patch.
>
> It's easiest for me if you send whole copies of the files that are
> fixed/changed.
Clearly this is an issue of personal style, but let me rattle off a
few reasons why I think patch files are a better choice:
+ They're more tolerant of file change. Consider my patch for the
sorted property list. David just applied it, but only after other
modifications to the same file. Doing this with a whole file is a
merge chore, but the patch still applied cleanly. There was a
feature collision recently (I forget the details) where changes got
backed out accidentally. This is much harder to do when all the
changes are stored and transferred as patch files.
+ They're more human readable. Inevitably, you're going to be doing a
diff between revisions to see what's changed anyway. This just give
it to you up front. If you want to look at more surrounding code,
you certainly can, but everyone starts with the diff anyway.
+ They're smaller, and much more appropriate for posting to the
mailing lists. This means that I can let everyone try the
virtual cockpit feature, instead of just the maintainers.
+ They're not nearly so hard to use as they seem the first time you
try them. Alas, (or maybe Lo! is a better word) "patch" is a Larry
Wall program. This means that it carries a lot of the same "figure
out what the user wants, no matter how inscrutable the logic"
baggage that perl does. But just like perl, once you are over the
learning curve it's a truly great tool that Just Works.
Basically, from your FlightGear tree:
% cvs diff > feature99.patch
And someone else can do:
% patch < feature99.patch
And everything works as advertised.
Andy
--
Andrew J. Ross NextBus Information Systems
Senior Software Engineer Emeryville, CA
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nextbus.com
"Men go crazy in conflagrations. They only get better one by one."
- Sting (misquoted)
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