OT: How to patch?

[Fabian Cenedese]

Hi

Not directly wine related but I'm sure also useful to others.

It was said on this list that the patches should be able to be applied
with patch (-p1) patch.diff, hence the inlining in the mail. But the patch
tool doesn't know anything about cvs. In the generated patch are infos
about the diff'd versions. So for applying a patch in my view it would be
best to update the sandbox to the version mentioned in the patch,
apply the patch (which should work without error), then update to HEAD
again. Because if you don't have the same file (maybe because the
patch was from an older version) it won't apply anymore. I know that
the unified format helps if there were small changes.
Isn't there a way to do it with cvs? I mean it can generate diffs, maybe
also apply (but I didn't find anything in the manual).
Or general question: How do others work with patches? Always with
the patch tool? Any switches I overlooked?

(This problem came up as I'm trying to create and maintain a patch so
it can be applied to the official distribution. But that's somehow useless
if it won't work with newer versions than the one were the patch was
created against, hence my idea with updating back and forth.)

Thanks

bye  Fabi