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

[Mitch Davis]

Hi Dirk,

On 1/25/07, Dirk Jagdmann <address@hidden> wrote:
> > The question still stands: Is anyone else interested in this?  Is
> > there any need for quilt to support changes to binary files?
>
> I would be interested, because you often have software which contains
> binary files and I'd like to be able to handle patches to those with quilt.

:-)

> However I won't vote for implementing a binary support in diff/patch but
> let quilt handle the situation. We could introduce an option for the
> "new" command to specifiy a new patch in binary format. This patch could
>  then be handled by xdelta.

I hadn't thought of that, interesting idea.  At the moment I'm using
diff's complaint about binary files to trigger the special handling
when generating diffs, and walking the patch looking for the @@ base64
trigger when applying them.

Two questions:

- If we add an option for new binary files (kind of like CVS' -kb),
how will quilt record the decision?

- At the moment, quilt is ignorant of binary diffs, and delegates the
decision making on binary diffs to the patch wrapper.  If the support
for binary patches was in quilt, does that mean quilt would have to
walk the patch looking for binary parts like my patch wrapper
currently does?

Anyway, since someone else is interested in the idea, I'll port my
changes to 0.47.  (Once again, not proposing my gross way as a
solution, more as a proof of concept for discussion).

Regards,

Mitch.