Re: diff-apply-hunk broken

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 18:08:18 -0500
> From: Miles Bader <address@hidden>
> 
> On Tue, Mar 30, 2004 at 06:28:22PM -0500, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > >> The manpage definitely mentions -L as does `diff --help'.
> > 
> > > What version are you referring to?  In GNU diffutils 2.8.1-6 (Debian
> > > unstable), diff -L is neither mentioned in the manpage, the info manual,
> > > nor diff --help.
> >
> >    ~-0% diff --version
> >    diff (GNU diffutils) 2.8.1
> 
> FWIW, fencepost has diff 2.7, which supports -L, and --help mentions it.

Actually, -L is supported in Diffutils 2.8.x as well, it's just
undocumented.

The file NEWS in the Diffutils distro tells the story:

    * The following diff options are still accepted, but are no longer
      documented. They may be withdrawn in future releases.
      [...]
      -L (use --label instead)

"diff --help" and the node "diff Options" in the Info manual have -L
removed in 2.8.x, but -L is still supported (and mentioned elsewhere
in the Info manual, perhaps inadvertently).

So it sounds like we shouldn't use -L in Emacs, lest it stops working
with future releases of Diffutils.  We should use --label instead.