On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 07:50:44AM +0100, Alistair Crooks wrote:
> 
> Does it relate to a manual page, or manual application of a patch? (I
> think I can guess, but I don't see the logic behind this).

They are used for patches which are included for reference purposes, but
not used as part of the package build. I didn't invent that idea, but
borrowed from devel/libtool. It is used by Todd for the regeneration of
the pkgsrc specific bits, since the same files are also installed and
must not be tainted. I've used it in wxGTK for the Bakefile diffs used
to generate the patchset.

Joerg