I'm missing something. What's broken, and why do you want to fix it? On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 3:18 AM, David Kirkby <david.kir...@onetel.net> wrote: > I propose that we make GNU patch a standard package, so that patches > to Sage can be made in a more sensible manner than using 'cp' as now. > (There's no point in 'patch' being optional at all, as it would be > needed when building Sage). > > For > * It is small - the source code is about 240 KB, so a Sage package > could be a similar size. > * It would be easy to maintain - we will rarely if ever need to update it. > * It will allow small patches to be made to Sage, without the extra > bulk that copying files makes > * It should reduce the chance of one patch screwing up another (see > my post about Singular) > * The amount of code that needs to be added to trac would be > significantly reduced. Currently making one small patch to a large > file in Sage means the Mercurial patch is huge, making it more > difficult to review. > * It would avoid the need to maintain both patched files and diff > files, and keep them in sync. I showed an example yesterday where one > of the patches to Python has a diff file that is older than the > changed source file. > * My removing the need to have large files copied, we could actually > reduce the size of Sage, though this is not going to happen overnight > - nobody is likely to want to elect to remove all patches that use > 'cp' and replace them by ones that use 'patch'. > * Since everyone will have the same version of patch, there should be > no issues like different patch commands behaving differently. > * I don't mind creating the package - it would be a simple task. > * I don't mind taking on the role of maintainer for 2 years > > Against. > * It adds more to Sage. > * It could not be optional/experimental. One would have to make a > decision for it to be 'standard' from the start. Otherwise it would > form no useful function at al. > * Mercurial can arguably be used, but this is difficult if not > impossible in my opinion. The version of Python shipped with Solaris > is too old to work with Mercurial, so we need a recent python to build > Mercurial. But Python needs patches to be built. We could patch Python > by using 'cp' then switch to Mercurial after it is built, but that > needs two different methods of patching Sage. (I've already shown > there is a bad patch in Python). > > So do you vote > > [Yes] Include GNU patch as a standard package in Sage > [No] Do not include it. > > Dave > > -- > To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to > sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel > URL: http://www.sagemath.org >
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