[darcs-users] Re: "patch" vs "patchset"

Mark Stosberg mark at summersault.com
Fri Jun 10 00:43:00 UTC 2005


On 2005-06-08, Tommy Pettersson <ptp at lysator.liu.se> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 07, 2005 at 06:24:48PM +0000, Kannan Goundan wrote:
>> 
>> It seems like the term "patch" is used for two different things:
>>   - A single change ("hunk", "replace", etc.)
>>   - Something in _darcs/patches
>> 
>> Can someone clarify this?  I'm slightly in favor of referring to the things in
>> "_darcs/patches" as "patchsets" because
>>   - I think, that's what they're called in the code, and
>>   - it's similar to "changeset", which some other VCSs use.
>> 
>> I'd like to fix up the manual to use whatever the correct terms are.
>
> The hunks, replaces, addfiles, etc, are _primitive_ patches.
> Then there are different kinds of composed patches, mostly
> used internally by darcs, but also for storing changes in
> _darcs/patches/unrevert and _darcs/patches/pending.  All other
> patches in _darcs/patches (those listed by 'darcs changes')
> are _named_ patches, which is made up of the patch info (name,
> comment, date...)  and one patch (usually a composed one,
> containing several primitive patches).

This is technically correct, but thinking about "primitive patches",
"composed patches" and "named patches" is confusing. 

I agree with Kannan that it would be clearer to use "patch" for
primitive patches and "patchset" or "changeset" for the complete think
in _darcs/patches. "Changeset" is more standard, but darcs already has:

-p and --patch and --patches which all actually refer to a "patchset". 

Unless the wording of those flags are changed, there will continue to be
confusion about what exactly we mean by "patch". I wouldn't mind if the
flags were renamed to "--patchset" and "--patchsets".

    Mark


-- 
http://mark.stosberg.com/ 





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