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Re: thoughts about svnpatch

From: Stefan Sperling <stsp_at_elego.de>
Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 16:21:27 +0100

On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 10:03:58PM +0200, Stefan Küng wrote:
> Stefan Sperling wrote:
> > - a strip-count option (-p) for stripping leading directory
> > components from target paths specified in the patch file
>
> This might even be possible to do automatically: the svn_client_patch()
> function knows the target path, and it knows the paths inside the
> svnpatch file. Stripping path parts from the paths in the svnpatch file
> until it 'matches' should be not very hard to implement?

I thought about this again. Consider the following scenario:

A patch wants to modify zzz/foo/x and zzz/bar/blob/y.

The target working copy contains:

foo/x
zzz/bar/blob/y

So there is not correct set of targets for the entire patch.

If we start stripping path components we'll end up matching foo/x
for the first target, and then we'll either find no match for
zzz/bar/blob/y after stripping zzz from it, or we'll match
zzz/bar/blob/y without stripping (depending on how we implement it).

In either case, the patch cannot be applied correctly, so we could
just say that if we don't find a match for all paths, we don't
apply the patch at all.

But if the user specifies how many components should be stripped,
there is no ambiguity anymore, and we can allow at least part of
the patch to be applied correctly:

-p0 --> skip foo/x, patch zzz/bar/blob/y
-p1 --> patch foo/x, skip zzz/bar/blob/y

So I don't want to do it automatically without providing a way to
override the automatic decision. Because the match can be ambiguous,
and if the user can't override it then the result will either be
incorrect or the application will fail entirely. Even if the user
might in fact be fine with applying just a subset of the patch.
The user would then rightfully say that Subversion is trying to
be too smart and is getting in the way rather than being helpful.

So we'll need a strip count option anyway, regardless of whether
or not we'll support automatic stripping of path components.

I'll add a -p flag and make it default to -p0. Then we can see about
adding some way of stripping path components automatically if you
really think it's necessary (I don't).

> TortoiseMerge currently does that before giving up if it can't find a match.

Right, and does it have the above problem?
If not, or if you don't think it's a problem, would you be willing
to implement it for Subversion, too?

Stefan
Received on 2009-07-09 17:21:51 CEST

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