I use a GUI program showing differences between files in order to commit the
changes to a revision control system. I don't want to see diffs in whitespace.
Quiz: how did I tell the program to ignore these diffs?
1. Pressed a button
2. Passed a command-line flag
3. Set an environment variable
4. Ran it under strace, found out that it runs a version of diff (apparently a
copy of GNU diff with the bug report address stripped from the help message),
copied the entire installation to my home directory, and replaced their diff
with a script running diff with -b
If you chose 4, you might be familiar with BitKeeper, the source control system
Linux fans used to love. That was before BitMover, having them hooked, stopped
giving the shitty thing away and required them to pay a shitload of money. The
way they always did with companies infested with enough Linux fans to promote
the program.
Well, I guess BitKeeper is right - whitespace matters in Makefiles, Python
scripts and ASCII art.
P.S. SourceSafe is worse than BitKeeper, and Microsoft is evil, stupid and
stinky.
