[bug-diffutils] Re: Bug#570064: diffutils 2.9 breaks dpkg-dev

[Jim Meyering]

Santiago Vila wrote:
> Raphael, this is the NEWS entry for the change:
>
> * Diff now simply prints "Files A and B differ" instead of "Binary
>   files A and B differ".  The message is output if either A or B
>   appears to be a binary file, and the old wording was misleading
>   because it implied that both files are binary, which is not
>   necessarily the case.
>
> Apparently, diff will show "Files A and B differ" only when at least
> one of them is binary, so the "meaning" is the same as before.

Right.

> My suggestion to avoid data loss would be something like this:
>
> Files A and B differ and at least one of them is binary.

That wording would be an improvement from the perspective
of conveying more information.  However, also changing the suffix
(before, we changed the prefix) would be disruptive to those who
matched against / differ$/.  Though note that all POSIX requires
is that the diagnostic list the two file names and the word "differ".
Speaking of conveying information, diff exits with status "2" when
it encounters differences like this that it does not display.

> However, as long as the "meaning" is the same (upstream could confirm this)
> even if the message is not changed again, I think it should be quite
> easy to adapt dpkg-dev to the new behaviour if it's kept that way.
>
> Let's see what upstream think about this.

I don't have a strong preference.
Do any of you?