Re: [Quilt-dev] Quilt support for binary files

[Mitch Davis]

On 1/24/07, Andreas Gruenbacher <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi Mitch,
>
> On Wednesday 24 January 2007 11:34, Mitch Davis wrote:
> > I'm using quilt to manage a series of patches which reflect the
> > changes I've made to a large tree of source.  One of those changes was
> > to replace some small .gif web graphics with new images.
>
> thanks for posting this. One very stupid idea that probably won't go anywhere:
> couldn't we build support for binary diffs into GNU diff and patch?

It seems the logical place to put it, however I'd be surprised if it
ever happens:

- It would add bzip and xdelta dependencies to diff and patch.

- The diff format has seemed sacred for a long time (but recent
alterations such as the git extensions may slaughter that cow)

- This is just an opinion but the GNU diff and patch people seem very
conservative and not interested in new features.  For example, I found
a bug in patch -D in about 1998, it was reported at least once to GNU
in 2002, and it's still unfixed in the latest GNU patch 2.5.4.

 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=140247

The question still stands: Is anyone else interested in this?  Is
there any need for quilt to support changes to binary files?

Regards,

Mitch.