[Quilt-dev] quilt new -p ab

[Jean Delvare]

Hi Andreas, Egbert,

A bug was reported when using "quilt new -p ab". Option "-p ab" gets
stored in the series file, however other quilt commands aren't ready to
deal with this. "quilt push" will pass "-p ab" straight to patch(1)
which doesn't support it. Also "quilt refresh" will not preserve the
option in the series file. The latter issue was reported here, with a
candidate fix:

https://savannah.nongnu.org/patch/index.php?10094

This all originates from this 12-year-old commit:

commit 66f9da46333e3d268cd1dd429ff2d2a674450d80
Author: Andreas Gruenbacher
Date:   Wed Nov 25 18:38:10 2009 +0100

    - new command: Add -p ... option (equivalent to diff -p ...).
      (Based on a patch from Egbert Eich.)

Apparently this was only ever tested with "-p0" and not with "-p ab"?

This brings the question as to whether we actually want to support
option "-p ab" in the "new" command and in the series file.

My initial feeling is that we shouldn't, as the options in the series
file are meant to be passed to patch(1), so we should only store "-p0"
and "-R" there. Thus one way to fix the bugs is to simply remove the
support of "-p ab" from the "new" command.

On the other hand, supporting "-p ab" in the series file would allow
preserving the patch format automatically at a per-patch level (as
opposed to QUILT_REFRESH_ARGS="-p ab" which enforces it for all
patches). Which is something we already do for "-p0".

So I see one good reason to go in each direction, but we need to decide
which direction to take. Thoughts?

Thanks,
-- 
Jean Delvare
SUSE L3 Support