Roland Illig wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I would like the pattern for patch filenames to be changed. In general 
> it is the shell pattern "patch-*", but there are two occurrences of the 
> AWK pattern "patch-[A-Za-z0-9]+". I would like to have the underscore 
> ("_") included in the allowed letters.
> 
> With this change we could name the patch files after the files they 
> patch ("patch-src_inode_c"), not with some arbitrarily chosen number 
> ("patch-af").

I'll summarize the discussion we had so far:

Having the underscore character in the patch name pattern:
- I (Roland) would like it
   (mainly to automatize the creation of patches)
- lukem thought this idea to be a good one

Naming scheme for patch files:
- grant would rather name the patches by function

So we have two different discussion points here. Are there any opinions 
against allowing the underscore in patch file names? If not, I would 
like this change to happen, as I already have many packages that would 
immediately build under Linux if only the patch names were allowed. :)

The other point (the naming scheme) is important, too. I noticed that 
with encoding the file name as the patch name the order in which the 
patches are applied only depends on the file name, not on the package 
maintainer's opinion. There might be problems with dependent files, such 
as ./configure and ./configure.ac, as well as lex and yacc files.

These alternatives came to my mind:

- only patching the relevant file (./configure) and letting
   ./configure.ac untouched

   This should cause no problems unless the package rebuilds ./configure
   during the build.

- prioritizing the patches depending on the name
   (especially the extension)

   This will cause extra time on the patch process, so it might be
   less acceptable.

Any comments?

Roland