Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2019 21:09:00 +0100 From: Evilham <contact@evilham.com> To: Andrea Venturoli <ml@netfence.it> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Some comments about /usr/bin/diff Message-ID: <74d50f0a-886c-4e42-b70e-614dd057788f@yggdrasil.evilham.com> In-Reply-To: <5ced220c-257d-280c-6c9a-7bd3242c40d8@netfence.it> References: <5ced220c-257d-280c-6c9a-7bd3242c40d8@netfence.it>
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Hello Andrea,
On dg., des. 22 2019, Andrea Venturoli wrote:
> I recently upgraded a box from 11.3 to 12.1 and I see diff has
> changed a
> lot: IIUIC on 11.3 I had GNU diff (possibly from
> /usr/src/contrib/diff?), while on 12.1 I have a different
> version (I
> believe it's BSD diff, from /usr/src/usr.bin/diff).
> I don't believe this change comes from some local settings of
> mine, but
> I didn't see it mentioned in the release notes (either for 12.0
> or 12.1).
> I think I know the reasons behind this (licenses) and I
> understand it:
> only, if I had known, I wouldn't have lost almost one day after
> a script
> that used to work before.
This is directly from UPDATING:
20170420:
GNU diff has been replaced by a BSD licensed diff. Some
features of GNU
diff has not been implemented, if those are needed a newer
version of
GNU diff is available via the diffutils package under the
gdiff name.
But to be fair I am unsure checking this file is recommended
anywhere on the documentation for "normal" update flows; maybe it
should be?
There is a note on the Release notes for 11.2:
The BSD-licensed diff(1) utility has been imported from
OpenBSD, which is installed if WITHOUT_GNU_DIFF is set in
src.conf(5), and otherwise not installed by default. [r331465]
But I didn't see a note about the default changing on the release
notes for 11.3, 12.0 or 12.1.
If that changed (and it looks like it did as I don't have GNU
diff) maybe the man src.conf shouldn't be talking about
WITHOUT_GNU_DIFF any longer as it does nothing?
Hopefully someone can confirm this.
Your other comments regarding diff should probably be documented
in form of a feature request + bug respectively.
--
Evilham
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