From owner-freebsd-arch Sat Apr 27 19:30:31 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mail.rpi.edu (mail.rpi.edu [128.113.22.40]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E1F4F37B404 for ; Sat, 27 Apr 2002 19:30:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [128.113.24.47] (gilead.netel.rpi.edu [128.113.24.47]) by mail.rpi.edu (8.12.1/8.12.1) with ESMTP id g3S2UQjJ542912 for ; Sat, 27 Apr 2002 22:30:26 -0400 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: drosih@mail.rpi.edu Message-Id: Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 22:30:25 -0400 To: arch@FreeBSD.ORG From: Garance A Drosihn Subject: Thinking about more work on 'patch' Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.3 (www dot roaringpenguin dot com slash mimedefang) Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG When checking the 'patch' utility while doing the "no newline" update, I noticed that both OpenBSD and NetBSD have a number of nice updates to clean up parts of the source code. I also noticed that both of them have a version of patch which is BSD-licensed, apparently because someone got Larry Wall to re-license one of the early versions of patch [I am a little vague on the exact details there...]. FreeBSD has the following versions of patch in the src tree: src/usr.bin/patch (entirely moved into the attic) src/gnu/usr.bin/patch (what we are actually using as /usr/bin/patch, it is based on patch 2.1) src/contrib/patch (an attempt to bring in a more recent version of gnu-patch, namely, version 2.5). What I'd like to do is something like: Take the patch from OpenBSD or NetBSD, and put it in src/usr.bin (I think theirs are based on patch 2.0.). Then add whatever updates the other one has done, and then add whatever updates we (as freebsd) have done. The idea is to end up with a bsd-licensed version which has all the stuff we're used to, along with all of the cleanup changes done by NetBSD and OpenBSD. I could also glance at patch 2.5 and see if there's any particularly attractive options than it has, and re-implement them (not "copy & paste them", but rewrite the options to keep a BSD license). I am in no rush to do this, but does this seem like a worthwhile thing to do? I would not want to commit anything to src/usr.bin/patch until I had a pretty good start on the work, but on the other hand I don't want to start on the work if no one would want the end result... Initially I'd suggest putting it in with 'PROG=bpatch' in the Makefile (just so it will not install over the patch we presently use), and only switch it to being 'patch' when we are comfortable that I have all the pieces in the new version. Once done, we could then toss both of the other two versions into the attic. Is this worth doing? -- Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@gilead.netel.rpi.edu Senior Systems Programmer or gad@freebsd.org Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute or drosih@rpi.edu To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message