GNU bug report logs - #19984
Diff and symlinks

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Ben Boeckel <mathstuf <at> gmail.com>
To: bug-diffutils <at> gnu.org
Subject: Diff and symlinks
Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2015 20:12:00 -0500

Hi,

When making recursive diffs, diff resolves symlinks. This creates
invalid patches since patch refuses to patch through a symlink. A -L
option to either turn on or off symlink resolution would be nice to
have.

See patch failure here:

    https://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org//work/tasks/5157/9125157/build.log

Thanks,

--Ben

Message #8 received at 19984 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Andreas Grünbacher <agruen <at> gnu.org>
To: mathstuf <at> gmail.com
Cc: 19984 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: [bug-diffutils] bug#19984: Diff and symlinks
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2015 16:06:17 +0100

Well, diff has a --no-dereference option for not following symlinks,
and patch has a --follow-symlinks option that will replace symlinks
with patched files. What else do you have in mind?

It's unfortunate that diff doesn't support git-style patches; this
would solve such ambiguities.

Andreas

Message #11 received at 19984 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Ben Boeckel <mathstuf <at> gmail.com>
To: Andreas Grünbacher <agruen <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 19984 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: [bug-diffutils] bug#19984: Diff and symlinks
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2015 10:09:38 -0500

On Tue, Mar 03, 2015 at 16:06:17 +0100, Andreas Grünbacher wrote:
> Well, diff has a --no-dereference option for not following symlinks,
> and patch has a --follow-symlinks option that will replace symlinks
> with patched files. What else do you have in mind?

Ah, I had missed that option. I had searched for 'symlinks' and didn't
see anything. *adds to Fedora patch alias*

Thanks,

--Ben

Message #14 received at 19984 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Andreas Grünbacher <agruen <at> gnu.org>
To: mathstuf <at> gmail.com
Cc: 19984 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: [bug-diffutils] bug#19984: Diff and symlinks
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2015 16:18:18 +0100

2015-03-03 16:09 GMT+01:00 Ben Boeckel <mathstuf <at> gmail.com>:
> Ah, I had missed that option. I had searched for 'symlinks' and didn't
> see anything. *adds to Fedora patch alias*

Be careful with that option and don't even think about adding it globally
for all packages -- the resulting semantics are weird and it breaks
symlinks in git-style diffs.

Andreas

Message #17 received at 19984 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Ben Boeckel <mathstuf <at> gmail.com>
To: Andreas Grünbacher <agruen <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 19984 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: [bug-diffutils] bug#19984: Diff and symlinks
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2015 10:20:04 -0500

On Tue, Mar 03, 2015 at 16:18:18 +0100, Andreas Grünbacher wrote:
> Be careful with that option and don't even think about adding it globally
> for all packages -- the resulting semantics are weird and it breaks
> symlinks in git-style diffs.

It's for making patches for Fedora packages, so it looks like:

    alias fdiff="diff -r -U5 --no-dereference"

--Ben

Message #20 received at 19984 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Andreas Grünbacher <agruen <at> gnu.org>
To: mathstuf <at> gmail.com
Cc: 19984 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: [bug-diffutils] bug#19984: Diff and symlinks
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2015 16:24:25 +0100

Okay, this is safe, diff will just fail when it encounters symlinks
that don't point to the same file.

Andreas

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