[MERGE] Bzr diff produces -p1 diffs

[Matthew D. Fuller]

On Wed, Mar 08, 2006 at 03:09:50PM +1100 I heard the voice of
Michael Ellerman, and lo! it spake thus:
> 
> That is, that _only_ a VCS can produce a recursive -p0 diff, there
> is _no way_ to do it by hand[1]. On the other hand it is trivial and
> intuitive to create a -p1 diff using _just_ diff.

Right, but I can't take the step that this exerts any weight on what a
VCS _should_ do.  I consider it a _failing_ of the lack of VCS that
you get that result.

We're going in circles here.  Presumably, we're all in agreement that
bzr _should_ be able to produce either.  The difficulty is what the
default should be.  I want it to be -p0 because I really dislike -p1,
but I also think it should be -p0 for reasons outside of me, because

1) -p1 gives no inherent added value in the general case.  What's the
   gain in adding something, just to chop it off?

2) Outside of some few specialized and otherwise-quirky communities,
   there's no preference I've ever seen for -p1.  And that preference
   apparently comes from lack of VCS'e anyway.

3) They're harder to scan by eye, because they refer to directories
   that don't exist.

4) If we're voting, there are probably more people using CVS (which
   produces -p0) than every other VCS on the planet combined.  SVN is
   probably in second place (at least among free VCSen), and it makes
   -p0 too.  And how many people look at CVS and say "Ew, why is this
   making weird diffs?" compared to people looking at (hg?) and saying
   the same?  (Most of the reasons people skip a tool are petty
   details, not massive shortcomings...)


> [1] Don't even think about using sed ;)

Oh, certainly not.  I mean, it's only 1 line of perl...    8-}

(though, really, if forced, I tend to use .orig files and a find(1)
invocation, so I DO generated -p0'ish diffs....)


-- 
Matthew Fuller     (MF4839)   |  fullermd at over-yonder.net
Systems/Network Administrator |  http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/
           On the Internet, nobody can hear you scream.