On Fri, Jul 09, 2004 at 06:23:00PM +0200, Roland Illig wrote:
> 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

I'm coming to this late, but there are other alternatives to the binary one
you propose.

1. If we're going to split patches out into one per source file, then
I quite like the split(1)-style names. Simple, easy, and works quite
well. All that filename-mangling will do is force me to find out how
the name has been mangled.

2.  abs is very fond of using a single file to hold all the patches,
and, to a certain extent, I can see where he's coming from.  I've used
this in the past, and it works just fine.  (When you're adding a
patch, you add it to the end of the file, removing any previous patch
that was in there).

3. No-one has yet explained to me why we should do this (and, frankly,
"because FreeBSD has done it" always carries with it lemming-like
images in my mind. And, yes, I know that Hollywood has given lemmings
a bad name)
 
> Naming scheme for patch files:
> - grant would rather name the patches by function

I'm not at all sure that this would scale well.
 
> 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. :)

Well, yes, I have an objection, in principle, to underscores. I don't
like them. And I don't like them in filenames. Or package names. I
don't understand why something will only build under Linux with
embedded underscores. Please explain why this is the case.
 
> 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.

At least with split(1) style names, you are guaranteed a strict
ordering.  How does moving to mangled names make this any more
correct?  I can see more problems in this regard with mangled names.

Now I'm obviously missing something here, but what is the problem
you're trying to fix?
 
Regards,
Alistair