Re: diff format

Larry McVoy (lm@bitmover.com)
Thu, 25 Feb 1999 16:50:12 -0800


: In earlier discussions you've expressed a distaste for the xdelta file
: format, but now you can't justify it anymore. Can you comment on this?
: It seems like you've changed your operational model.
:
: You begin by saying that you want context diffs, but that now you intend
: to use diff -n for transmission.

Yup, you're right and you raise some good points. There is no reason
why the diff -n stuff couldn't use xdelta instead, in fact, that would
probably be a far more compact answer.

: That's because (I suspect) you can't guarantee a patch's idempotency
: with contextual information. You can't guarantee much with only a patch,
: but since you also record a patch's parent version the diff format is
: unimportant.

Yes, this is all true. If you want to talk about having BitKeeper use
xdelta as a transmission format, I'd be very open to that, I think it
is a great idea.

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