patches policy

[Dimitrie O. Paun]

On September 10, 2002 12:55 am, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
>   I beg to differ.

I did not intend to start a flamewar -- various solutions to this
very problem have been tried in the OSS comunity for a number
of years, and it seems that people in the know prefer inlined
patches (or attached as text). And this is for a lot of good reasons,
some of which I have already mentioned. I should note that
Linus will simply drop patches if they are not inlined.

> When I copy/paste text, my mail compser feels it has the right (and for
> a good reason) to do stuff to the text. This may include changing tabs
> with spaces, word wraps, etc. These are exteremely annoying.

Most mailers have an "Insert file" action. Simply turn off line wrapping
and there you go. If that doesn't work, your mailer is broken.
It is also true that are a few mailers out there which are known to be
broken. Some old pine versions, for example.

> Dimitrie - please find one of my patch submissions, and let me know if
> it is displayed inline for you. If it is, attaching a file called .diff
> is the right way to go. If not, attaching .txt may be a solution. I am
> very much against copying the patch into the message, however.

You shouldn't be. If you can control your mailer, there's nothing wrong
with them.

Your patches show inline, they are fine. If this is how you want to do it,
that's fine. For all practical purposes, actually inlining the patch, or
attaching it as plain text, works about the same. Pick your poison.

--
Dimi.