Re: dontdiff has unfixable problems

From: Tigran Aivazian (tigran@veritas.com)
Date: Thu Aug 24 2000 - 14:43:59 EST


Hi David,

Thank you for the email. I did actually know about this limitation and
could not think of any way to solve it (well, Michael's idea of
'Generated/*' pattern is fine but who is goind to do the work?)

Regards,
Tigran

 On Thu, 24
Aug 2000, David Mansfield wrote:

> Tigran,
>
> I just wanted you to know (and the list to know) that the dontdiff has
> some unfixable problems having to do with the following limitation of
> diff (from the manpage):
>
> -X file
> When comparing directories, ignore files and subdi­
> rectories whose basenames match any pattern con­
> tained in file.
>
>
> The problem is that it only compares *basenames*, and in the kernel
> source, we have two files with the same basename but in different
> directories, one of which needs to be ignored, the other needs to be
> included.
>
> For example, the one I sent you: net/khttpd/times.h should be ignored
> but include/linux/times.h should not be. There are 3 versions of
> 'version.h', the include/linux/version.h which should be ignored, and
> include/pcmcia/version.h and arch/i386/math-emu/version.h which should
> not be ignored.
>
> The same applies to directory names themselves. We want to ignore
> scripts/lxdialog/lxdialog (the executable) but not ignore
> scripts/lxdialog (the entire directory!).
>
> I just thought I'd mention this in case you want to put these caveats
> into the dontdiff file, or something, or in case anyone out there (like
> me) is using these as a basis for setting up CVS.
>
> (Of course in CVS, you can do per-directory ignores which fixes the
> problem at the expense of some extra maintenence.)
>
> In case I sound unthankful, however, that is untrue. The dontdiff file
> saved me enormous time. I used to have to do 'make distclean' before
> doing anything to make sure all the derived files were gone. What a
> hassle you have saved me.
>
> Thanks,
> David Mansfield
>

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