vc-sccs.el sends bad args to cmp(1) via vcdiff script

[Jim Marks]

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In GNU Emacs 21.4.1 (sparc-sun-solaris2.8, X toolkit)
 of 2005-12-14 on pkg-build
configured using `configure  --prefix=/pkg/gnu
--x-includes=/usr/openwin/include:/usr/dt/include
--x-libraries=/usr/openwin/lib:/usr/dt/lib --with-x
--with-x-toolkit=athena --without-toolkit-scroll-bars --with-xpm
--with-tiff --with-jpeg --with-gif --with-png'
Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: C
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: C
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: C
  locale-coding-system: nil
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: t

Please describe exactly what actions triggered the bug
and the precise symptoms of the bug:

This problem surfaces on Sun Solaris when trying to use
version control with SCCS as the backend.

The source file gnu/share/emacs/21.4/lisp/vc-sccs.el has the following
defun:

(defun vc-sccs-workfile-unchanged-p (file)
  "SCCS-specific implementation of vc-workfile-unchanged-p."
  (zerop (apply 'vc-do-command nil 1 "vcdiff" (vc-name file)
                (list "--brief" "-q"
                      (concat "-r" (vc-workfile-version file))))))

The important thing here is that the "--brief" option gets passed
to vcdiff as well as the "-r" option.

On my system, vcdiff is a helper script in

gnu/libexec/emacs/21.4/sparc-sun-solaris2.8/vcdiff

It contains this code:


                case $f in
                --brief)
                        DIFF=cmp;;

and, later, executes $DIFf.  This causes cmp to be invoked
with a "-r" option.  I can't find any Unix-clone on which
cmp(1) takes "-r".  This will always cause certain vc operations
to fail on systems where SCCS is the vc backend.


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