Re: svn commit: r11218 - trunk/subversion/clients/cmdline

Ben Reser wrote:
>>Author: julianfoad
>>Date: Sun Oct 3 18:54:44 2004
>>New Revision: 11218
[...]
>>Modified: trunk/subversion/clients/cmdline/main.c
[...]
>>- {"extensions", 'x', 1, N_("pass ARG as bundled options to GNU diff")},
>>+ {"extensions", 'x', 1, N_("pass ARG as bundled options to diff (default: '-u')")},
>
> I disagree with this commit. Until we stop passing -u and -L desipite
> this param the documentation is probably better iwth GNU diff. You can
> write a wrapper script that emulates GNU diff and then calls whatever
> you want.

I did wonder about this, and held off changing it for about six months for that sort of reason. When confusion over the undocumented default of "-u" cropped up on the mailing list for the Nth time, I finally decided that it was worth changing this help to mention the default, and that changing the phrase "GNU diff" to "diff" was a good thing to do at the same time. (It has been suggested by Big Names on this list a long time ago.)

It could add more information by saying "GNU-like diff", but it was wrong to suggest that this is only for passing options to GNU diff, and it is now correct in suggesting that it passes options to (unspecified) "diff". Yes, the diff program has to accept "-L" options, which means that in that respect it must be similar to GNU diff, but that does not mean that it _is_ GNU diff.

(Note also that the "-L" options are passed always, and separately from the options passed by "-x", which is why I don't mention them in the help for "-x".)

- Julian

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Received on Tue Oct 12 02:18:28 2004