From owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Apr 1 22:12:43 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0E8F416A4CE for ; Fri, 1 Apr 2005 22:12:43 +0000 (GMT) Received: from pd3mo3so.prod.shaw.ca (shawidc-mo1.cg.shawcable.net [24.71.223.10]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 713B943D5E for ; Fri, 1 Apr 2005 22:12:42 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from colin.percival@wadham.ox.ac.uk) Received: from pd2mr4so.prod.shaw.ca (pd2mr4so-qfe3.prod.shaw.ca [10.0.141.107]) by l-daemon (Sun ONE Messaging Server 6.0 HotFix 1.01 (built Mar 15 2004)) with ESMTP id <0IEA00MUZGCZ04WT@l-daemon> for freebsd-arch@freebsd.org; Fri, 01 Apr 2005 15:12:35 -0700 (MST) Received: from pn2ml1so.prod.shaw.ca ([10.0.121.145]) by pd2mr4so.prod.shaw.ca (Sun ONE Messaging Server 6.0 HotFix 1.01 (built Mar 15 2004)) with ESMTP id <0IEA00GR5GCZI620@pd2mr4so.prod.shaw.ca> for freebsd-arch@freebsd.org; Fri, 01 Apr 2005 15:12:35 -0700 (MST) Received: from [192.168.0.60] (S0106006067227a4a.vc.shawcable.net [24.87.209.6]) by l-daemon (iPlanet Messaging Server 5.2 HotFix 1.18 (built Jul 28 2003)) with ESMTP id <0IEA00D0BGCYIG@l-daemon> for freebsd-arch@freebsd.org; Fri, 01 Apr 2005 15:12:35 -0700 (MST) Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2005 14:12:23 -0800 From: Colin Percival In-reply-to: To: Garance A Drosihn Message-id: <424DC747.4020604@wadham.ox.ac.uk> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit X-Accept-Language: en-us, en X-Enigmail-Version: 0.90.1.0 X-Enigmail-Supports: pgp-inline, pgp-mime References: <424B3AAB.6090200@wadham.ox.ac.uk> <20050401134347.GA6676@Pandora.MHoerich.de> <20050401152805.GA4564@dan.emsphone.com> User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.2 (X11/20050326) cc: Dan Nelson cc: lists@MHoerich.de cc: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Adding bsdiff to the base system X-BeenThere: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussion related to FreeBSD architecture List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2005 22:12:43 -0000 >> In the last episode (Apr 01), Mario Hoerich said: >>> Not that it's important, but the names probably aren't the best >>> possible choice, as 'bsdiff' seems to suggest 'BSD licensed diff'. No, it would be "BSD licensed iff". :-) > At 9:28 AM -0600 4/1/05, Dan Nelson wrote: >> Yes, that's what I assumed this thread was about for the first >> couple posts. bdiff/bpatch sound like better names. What's the >> 's' stand for? Err... nothing. Or rather, I'm not sure what it stands for. I was looking for a name for a diff tool which worked on "binary software" (or more generally, files with lots of "byte-substitutions"), and which uses "bytewise subtraction" as part of its encoding process... (I'm sure you can think of other possible meanings of "bs", as well.) Garance A Drosihn wrote: > I was also confused by the names at first. How about just > 'bindiff' and 'binpatch'? These do sound like useful utilities > to add, now that I understand what they are... When I first wrote this code, I called it "bdiff". Soon thereafter, it was pointed out to me that there was a bit of a namespace collision -- the name "bdiff" -- and the name "bindiff", which was my second choice -- had each been used for several different (not very good) binary diff tools already. So I looked for a name which hadn't already been used by several other people, and settled on "bsdiff" / "bspatch" as a compromise between being descriptive and avoiding the possibility of getting confused with another program. This is all rather immaterial at this point, however: It's far too late to change the name now. Colin Percival