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Date:      Sat, 21 Apr 2012 13:15:53 -0700
From:      Ben Fiedler <bfiedler@asu.edu>
To:        Matthew Story <matthewstory@gmail.com>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, Gabor Kovesdan <gabor@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Status of BSD Diff replacement?
Message-ID:  <CAD0qd_KobUXSc_VCd9NEwOSHEd7Kt3x%2Bns0dcBmBruwgcAeB6w@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAB%2B9ogca7RXBMhecMBpPR0SbmhcAadr4=uLepML3UPmUZmieGw@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <CAB%2B9ogdGm0F=eJJFayb%2B1m8-e178au9VApA0wq74COKC=cAGPw@mail.gmail.com> <4F8E0163.9030009@FreeBSD.org> <CAD0qd_%2BcSVx58FMiquXHuE0nhXg9XKHC%2BLC9q-tswkQE8nsD%2BA@mail.gmail.com> <CAB%2B9ogca7RXBMhecMBpPR0SbmhcAadr4=uLepML3UPmUZmieGw@mail.gmail.com>

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http://www.public.asu.edu/~bfiedler/bsdtextproc.tar.gz

Here's a tar.gz of my project file: I did not include the diff/ directory,
but instead gabor_diff/ , as that's where the latest changes are. iirc the
original diff/ in my project was taken from the source for Gabor's 'bsdiff'
under the ports tree, but then after a few weeks I discovered he had made
newer changes to the code under perforce, so I based gabor_diff/ off of
that. Sorry if this is all confusing :)

-Ben


On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 8:30 PM, Matthew Story <matthewstory@gmail.com>wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 10:01 PM, Ben Fiedler <bfiedler@asu.edu> wrote:
>
>> 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
>
>
> Awesome, thanks for that link.
>
>
>>
>>
>> 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,
>>
>>
> just to verify, these are the correct 2 branches to look at:
>
>
> http://p4web.freebsd.org/@md=d&cd=//depot/projects/soc2008/&c=iZC@//depot/projects/soc2008/gabor_textproc/?ac=83
>
> http://p4web.freebsd.org/@md=d&cd=//depot/projects/soc2010/&c=QTP@//depot/projects/soc2010/bsdtextproc/?ac=83
>
> it looks like gabor_diff in soc2010 is based off the soc2008 work.
>
> Is there anyway either of you could provide me with an archive of the
> working tree for these 2 perforce repos?  or make it available in a branch
> on svn.freebsd.org?  I'd like to look into this more, but after reading
> through the P4Web docs, trying to gain anonymous read-only access through
> p4 itself, and then reading:
>
>
> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2007-August/156862.html
>
> it seems there's no real way to accommodate this sort of thing at current.
>
>
>> 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.
>>>
>>
> Since 2008/2010 the OpenBSD change logs referencing diff(1) sdiff(1) and
> diff(3) are:
>
> 4.9
> Use scandir(3) instead of getdirentries(2) in diff(1). Call to
> getdirentries(2) should be avoided outside of libc
> 4.8
> Many diff(1) improvements.
> Make diff(1) return 2 on error.
> 4.6
> Fix file descriptor leaks in sdiff(1) when diffing regular files.
>
> I think the many diff(1) improvements is when ray started maintaining diff
> (not millert), so perhaps I can ping him as well if I make any headway on
> this.
>
>
>>
>>> 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
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> regards,
> matt
>



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