Full files in changesets?

[Aaron Bentley]

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Michael Ellerman wrote:
> On Tue, 24 May 2005 03:22, Aaron Bentley wrote:
> 
>>There's no way of escaping the fact that we need to be able to produce
>>'patch'-incompatible changesets, e.g. for binaries.  So it might make
>>sense to introduce a patch 'syntax error' into patch-incompatible
>>changesets.  (and change the wording to 'you can apply this patch with
>>"bzr receive", but NOT "patch"')
> 
> 
> That would suck a lot. It looks like a patch, smells like a patch, but when I 
> apply it with patch it breaks. -ENOTDWIM

I'm not proposing adding a syntax error all the time, but there are
changes patch cannot apply.  For those cases, I think introducing a
syntax error is better than the alternative, which is to have patch do
an incomplete job, while giving the impression that it has done a
complete one.

Renames are on the fringe, because patch can apply them, but only at the
cost of much verbosity in the changeset.

> IMHO, renames are resonably rare (and binaries even rarer), so making the 
> changset format incompatible with patch just to make renames look nicer would 
> be not good.

Definitely not all changesets.  Maybe not rename changesets.  I think
it's the best option for changesets with binaries, though.

> I think the best option would be to put all rename patches at the end and make 
> a comment about renames in the top of the patch (or maybe an intelligent 
> diffstat?), so you can eyeball the renames straight away, and when scanning 
> the diff you can stop as soon as you see:
> 
> ## renamed file foo.c to bar.c
> 
> because you know that the diff and any following it are just for renames.

That could work.  I was certainly thinking of putting most of the
metadata below all the text changes, so that's a similar approach to
renames.

Aaron
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