Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 17 Apr 2012 19:01:08 -0700
From:      Ben Fiedler <bfiedler@asu.edu>
To:        Gabor Kovesdan <gabor@freebsd.org>
Cc:        Matthew Story <matthewstory@gmail.com>, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Status of BSD Diff replacement?
Message-ID:  <CAD0qd_%2BcSVx58FMiquXHuE0nhXg9XKHC%2BLC9q-tswkQE8nsD%2BA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <4F8E0163.9030009@FreeBSD.org>
References:  <CAB%2B9ogdGm0F=eJJFayb%2B1m8-e178au9VApA0wq74COKC=cAGPw@mail.gmail.com> <4F8E0163.9030009@FreeBSD.org>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Gabor,

I made a branch off of your perforce diff code in my work on the diff tool:
>From my understanding you started those modifications from OpenBSD's diff
in 2008, so Matthew's assertion that "our incomplete BSD diff is OpenBSD
diff + improvements" is 100% correct. I also ported and started work on
sdiff and diff3 from OpenBSD, but made minimal headway on each.

The red items on the table here lists the needed argument support to match
GNU grep:  http://wiki.freebsd.org/SOC2010BenFiedler#diff

Though there's only a few left, they are not trivial by any means.

-Ben


On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 4:48 PM, Gabor Kovesdan <gabor@freebsd.org> wrote:

> On 2012.04.17. 23:03, Matthew Story wrote:
>
>> Just wondering what the current status is on a BSD diff replacement.  The
>> IdeasPage suggests that a goodly amount of work was done on this for GSoC
>> 2010 (http://wiki.freebsd.org/**IdeasPage#BSD-licensed_Text-**
>> Processing_Tools<http://wiki.freebsd.org/IdeasPage#BSD-licensed_Text-Processing_Tools>),
>> but the GPLinBase page says it's unowned and suggests replacement with
>> OpenBSD diff (http://wiki.freebsd.org/**GPLinBase<http://wiki.freebsd.org/GPLinBase>;
>> ).
>>
> Unless OpenBSD folks have changed or developed something, our incomplete
> BSD diff is OpenBSD diff + improvements.
>
>>
>> Wondering how much is outstanding on this, and where to start reading to
>> catch up on what's been done?
>>
>
> I worked a bit on that in 2008 along with grep and sort but these got more
> priorities so lots of features are still missing. Then Ben Fiedler also
> worked on it in 2010 but I don't exactly know what he accomplished and
> whether he took my code or chose another way. So for someone who wants to
> work on it, first it should be checked what's done, maybe merge my version
> and Ben's version, check whether OpenBSD added something new or fixed
> somethings and then implement missing features and do lots of testing to
> ensure compatibility with GNU diff. And performance tests and improvements
> if necessary.
>
> I work on grep/regex related things and recently Oleg Moskalenko took over
> my incomplete BSD sort code but noone is working on BSD diff so any
> contribution is very welcome.
>
> Gabor
>



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?CAD0qd_%2BcSVx58FMiquXHuE0nhXg9XKHC%2BLC9q-tswkQE8nsD%2BA>