Hi Jean,

Thanks for the tip on adding those quilt options to the configuration file.
I've done a quick experiment and it seems to work.

On Tue, 13 Aug 2024, 14:23 Jean Delvare, <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi Aidan,
>
> On Fri, 2024-08-09 at 11:03 +0100, Aidan wrote:
> > On Fri, 9 Aug 2024, 10:46 Jean Delvare, <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > On Thu, 2024-08-08 at 09:26 +0100, Aidan wrote:
> > > > I need to use quilt for patch binary files, however, quilt rejects
> > > > this.
> > > >
> > > > Is this a deliberate decision or does it just need implemented?
> > >
> > > This is a technical limitation. Quilt relies on GNU patch to apply the
> > > patches and GNU diff to generate them. GNU diff doesn't support binary
> > > files. I don't think GNU patch supports binary files either, the manual
> > > page mentions a binary mode but I seem to understand it's only about
> > > text file line ending conversion, not actual binary files.
> >
> > I believe GNU patch and diff do work with binary files.
> > I've just tested this and it works:
> >
> > diff --binary --text binary1 binary2 > mypatch
> >
> > patch binary1 < mypatch
>
> OK, this is news to me. Option --binary of GNU diff is undocumented (at
> least in the versions I'm using, 3.6 and 3.10) so I'm not sure what it
> does exactly. I suspect it simply avoids line end conversions,
> similarly to what the GNU patch option does. If your binary files are
> large, patches generated that way will be very large as well, as I
> don't expect GNU diff to find any matching "line" so it will simply
> include both files in their entirety in the patch.
>
> I think you should also pass option --binary to GNU patch to be on the
> safe side.
>
> If the above commands work for the files you are dealing with, then you
> may try adding the following to your ~/.quiltrc configuration file:
>
> QUILT_PATCH_OPTS="--binary"
> QUILT_DIFF_OPTS="--binary --text"
>
> Maybe it will satisfy your need, but I can't promise anything.
>
> --
> Jean Delvare
> SUSE L3 Support
>
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