Re: [Quilt-dev] quilt new -p ab

[Egbert Eich]

Hi Jean,

Jean Delvare writes:
 > Hi Egbert,
 > 
 > On Mon, 30 Aug 2021 14:26:23 +0200, Egbert Eich wrote:
 > > Jean Delvare writes:
 > >  > 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 is not unlikely. When I sent these patches to Andreas, I was
 > > addressing issues I had with RPM packages, and RPMs do not support
 > > the -p ab option with %patch. So I may have never looked into '-p ab'.
 > 
 > That was my guess, thanks for confirming.
 > 
 > >  > 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.  
 > > 
 > > I believe my intention was to support also 'higher' levels than 0 or 1.
 > > 'diff' also supports -p ab - at least according to the man page.
 > 
 > Hmm? -p means something completely different for diff (--show-c-function).

'quilt diff' not 'diff' ;)

> 
 > >  > 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?  
 > > 
 > > The behavior should be consistent. When dropping it, it should probably
 > > be dropped everywhere. On the other hand, this might make people unhappy
 > > whose workflows will break.
 > > That someone has bothered to provide a fix shows that this feature has
 > > a user ;)
 > 
 > Sometimes people fix something that is broken (and has been broken for
 > long because it had no user) simply because they do not realize that
 > they can achieve the same (or sometimes even better) in a different
 > way, that already works. That's what I would like to avoid here.

Sure, understood. Maybe you should reach out to the reporter and find out
what the motivation behind the fix was.

 > Of course if adding support solves an actual problem and can be done
 > easily then I'll do that.

Right. Personally, I don't get to use quilt much at the moment - when I
do it is in the context of the SUSE kernel. There I don't require
the '-p ab' feature - at least not as far as my recollection reaches
back ;)

Thanks!

Cheers,
        Egbert.