Re: [Quilt-dev] Can Quilt patch be created after file edits (say from svn diff)

[Kaz Kylheku]

[List's rude Reply-to: munging corrected manually]

On Thu, 30 Aug 2012 03:23:46 -0600, "Harippriya Sivapatham"
<address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi,  
> 
>  I am evaluating Quilt to manage the patches that we occasionally
> create for specific customer issues. It appears that a file must be
> added to quilt patch before it is edited. I am afraid that some
> developer might forget this quilt step and simply go ahead and make
> his changes, which would result in incomplete patches.

If this situation occurs, it can be repaired. Simply save the affected
files somewhere, bring the originals in, add them to quilt and copy
the modified files over. After this happens two or three times, you
will learn not to do it.

Even with these hiccups, quilt will still result in a net
productivity gain over any other method of managing patches.

Also: in addition to the "quilt edit" trick that you've been told about
there is one more: when unpacking the files to form the working tree,
make them read-only,

You see, "quilt edit" will not only add a file under
quilt control, but also will make it writable.
(The "quilt add" command also does this; so "quilt edit"
is not necessary if you follow this discipline.)

The write protection on the files which were not added to quilt
will forcibly save you from editing them outside of quilt control,
regardless of whether you train yourself to use "quilt edit"
or not.

Furthermore, quilt will restore the read only status of
files when you do "quilt pop", This is because the original inodes
are saved under the  .pc directory, so all their meta-data like
time-stamps, ownership and permissions are properly restored!

The only drawback may be that some build systems might not like it
if all files in their source trees are read-only, making it
necessary to cherry-pick.