Property diffs as unidiff (Issue #1493)

Part of bite-sized issue #1493 ("Property Diffs/Merges Should Use
libsvn_diff"; http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=1493)
calls for property diffs to be output as unified diffs. I'm interested
in implementing it.

The current propdiff output is generated by display_prop_diffs() in
libsvn_client/diff.c. That function has enough context to generate
a unidiff (if it called the memory-diff APIs), but if it generated
a plain unidiff, patch(1) would choke trying (failing) to apply the
propdiff hunks to a file.

The output should be sufficiently different from unidiff that patch(1)
wouldn't choke, but similar enough that people accustomed to reading
unified diffs can read it easily. (The change could be as simple as
s/@@/@@@/g or changing the '---'/'+++' headers; anything patch(1) will
ignore is good.)

The output format has come up before, and formats were suggested, but
I didn't see a decision reached. (I could summarise the ideas I found
in the archives if requested.) However, I want to implement it, and
I can't complete that unless I know how to format the output.

How should property diffs be formatted, in order to be human-readable,
unified diffs, and ignored by patch(1)?

Once the answer is agreed upon, I'll be happy to make a patch to
implement it. Ideas, comments, pointers from anyone are welcome.

Daniel

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Received on 2008-02-06 17:09:10 CET