Re: [Quilt-dev] ptk|gui~diff

[Andreas Gruenbacher]

On Saturday 01 February 2003 07:26, James Rowe wrote:
> Hey
>
>   So then, what is going to be the procedure with resurrecting those
> features you miss from patch-scripts?

I suggest we ask on the list for each feature. Just in case it's already 
there but in a slightly different form. Good?

>   For example, I really miss ptkdiff(even though I used it with
> xfdiff). I often quite like to see a graphical representation of what
> changes have been made through a patch.
>
>   Anyway, are they going to put in the main helper directory, a
> contrib/ directory or rejected as they aren't necessities?
>
>   Find attached patch that resurrects ptkdiff as guidiff, the command
> used in guidiff is set during configure(so yes it can only be applied
> after the autoconf patches).  The version attached will put itself in
> the main helper directory($prefix/share/quilt).

I have added guidiff as proposed, but it's only being installed if you 
specify --with-guidiff=<something>. The something is which tool you 
want to run the diffs through.

I think guidiff should be always installed and take the GUIDIFF utility 
from the environment or from the command line, though.

It would probably be even better to integrate this in `quilt diff'; it 
has a number of features that are equally nice in GUI mode. There could 
be a switch to quilt diff like --gui[=<something>] to run files through 
<something> instead of through diff (via the diff_file function).

Thill not well thought out: guidiff will potentially start a lot of 
instances of GUIDIFF. I don't know how to deal with that intelligently.

Another note: `quilt diff' and `quilt refresh' are currently slightly 
too stupid. They diff they print an `Index: ' line for each file they 
diff, even for files that contain any differences. Should be a simple 
fix in scripts/patchfns.in.

> Right now it will only work with diff tools that use "command file1
> file2", it wouldn't be hard to add support for a printf style
> argument(something like 'guidiff_of_the_week %s --funny-place-opt %s'
> although I can't think of a tool that would need something like that
> but still).

That would be a nice bit of over engineering, right?  :)


--Andreas.