Re: [Quilt-dev] quilt diff and stderr

[Jean Delvare]

Hi Andreas,

[Jean Delvare]
> > The "diff" command of quilt currently prints a message on stderr in
> > certain circumstances:
> >
> > More recent patches modify files in patch X
> >
> > And this is true, but I don't quite see how this constitutes an
> > error.
> >
> > This seems to be more of an additional information of arguable
> > interest than an error. Or am I missing something?

[Andreas Gruenbacher]
> Yes, it's not an error but only a warning. No error is returned.

Actually, an error value (1) *is* returned, so maybe we could fix at
least that if you think it's not correct. What I am personally concerned
about here is stderr though, not the return value.

> Maybe we could make that more obvious. I disagree with your
> assessment that the information is irrelevant though: the user may
> have modified some of the  files that patches further on top of the
> stack modify as well, expecting the  changes to show up in the below
> patch, but they won't. This could cause a lot of confusion.

I don't understand. Could you please detail a concrete scenario where
this message would appear and would be desired?

> The diff command is also about seeing what will be in a patch after
> the next refresh.

The manual page doesn't say that. Maybe we should make it clearer? I
have always wondered whether "quilt diff" was getting the data from
patches/* of from .pc/* and the current files. It would be the latter if
I read you correctly.

Thanks,
-- 
Jean Delvare