Re: Introducing the patchadd binary patch toolchain

[Adam Hoka <adam.hoka%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Wed, 29 Apr 2009 07:40:50 +0200
Tonnerre Lombard <tonnerre%NetBSD.org@localhost> wrote:

> Salut, Elad,
> 
> On Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:22:02 +0300, Elad Efrat wrote:
> > > The tools
> > > =========
> > > 
> > > The tools, which have been added to pkgsrc/sysutils/patchadd
> > > recently,
> > 
> > So you've added an incomplete tool to update the system into mainline
> > pkgsrc? out of pure curiosity (and since this is a tool to update
> > NetBSD, supposedly), did you discuss it in a public forum as you do
> > now?
> 
> I did discuss this with other developers. And as mentioned before, this
> tool is working, it's just that some features which people may want are
> already missing. My goal was to get this out in time for the 5.0
> release so we can start rolling binary patches by now.
> 
> > > consist of the following tools:
> > > 
> > >  - patch_add, a tool to apply binary patches,
> > >  - patch_delete, a tool to back out a patch added without -r, and
> > >  - patch_info, a tool to display the list of installed patches.
> > 
> > Why are they all separate tools and not a single one?
> 
> To mimic the behavior of the pkg_* tools.

I also think this is counterintuitive.

> > I don't understand why invent yet another file format and syntax. I
> 
> I'm not sure what format you would have chosen. I don't think there's
> an existing one. This one is pretty similar to what our packages use,
> though.
> 
> > also highly recommend you think about common uses for updating tools
> > (because hopefully that's what we want - a *single* tool to be used
> > to update the system, and not a confusing collection) -- therefore,
> 
> Please note that "Backing out a patch" and "What patches are
> installed?" are different use cases than "Install a patch".
> 
> > you should think on how you can make life easier for people who
> > release patches, write security advisories/notes based on the
> > patches, and so on.
> 
> They only create the patch files and regen the index.
> 
> > Needless to say, haze did all that almost two years ago.
> > 
> > > The patch index
> > > ===============
> > 
> > Is that another format and syntax?
> 
> It actually embeds the syntax of the +INFO file of the patch, as you
> could probably have deduced. It just extends it in order to contain
> multiple patches in one file. Also, it is generated, so nobody would
> ever have to bother with it unless for debugging the patch_tool.
> 
> > Out of personal interest, can you elaborate on why you chose to write
> > a tool from scratch, given nbupdate (agc@) and haze (mine) freely
> > available? also, can you elaborate on why you prefer binary patching
> > to simply distributing replacement files?
> 
> At some point maybe. Right now I'm too busy.
> 
>                               Tonnerre
> 
> 


-- 
Adam Hoka <adam.hoka%gmail.com@localhost>