On Tue, 28 Jan 2003, John S. Chalice wrote:
> And what do I do with this .diff file? I am quite the linux newbie.. :)
It is the difference between two versions of a set of source files -- a
"delta", so to speak.
You apply it to the "older" of the two versions with a nice utility called
"patch".
The diff file (also called "a patch") is the result of running the utility
called "diff" on two files or two sets of files. It prints the
differences to stdout, which the programmer can choose to look at or to
redirect to a file (which is what happened in this case).
The diff file is human-readable - go have a look to see which files are
changed and how :)
Three great points about diffs:
o it is used to synchronize developers placed all over the world.
Whenever somebody has written a newer version of some code s/he/it
sends the diff file (usually in the socalled "unified" format because most
people find it easier to read). It is pretty clear to the rest if the
changes are worthwhile or not just from reading those diff.
o you can concatenate several diff files to make one big patch:
cat diff1 diff2 diff3 > bigpatch
o you can insert a diff file right in the middle of an email and later
feed it into patch -- which will obediently ignore the text in
your email and just apply the patch!
Linus Torvalds used to export all the emails with interesting patches to
one big file and then apply the whole shebang. You can also "massage"
patch files pretty easily in a text editor if you need to.
man patch should help you with the rest of the details.
(you will probably need to type something like patch -p0 <
radeonpatchwhatever.diff while in the directory with all the other source
code and then recompile)
-Peter
"We need to see ex-girlfriends occasionally so that we remember why we
aren't with them anymore."
_______________________________________________
XFree86 mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xfree86
