patch and CVS

[Carlo Wood]

Diffs generated by 'cvs diff' are unuable with patch, and have been
for many years.  Why is this never fixed?  Is there a way to work
around this?

The problem is that cvs diff produces diffs with headers like:

Index: Makefile.am
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/libcw/src/libcwd/Makefile.am,v
retrieving revision 1.32
diff -u -d -p -r1.32 Makefile.am
--- Makefile.am 2001/08/27 12:46:26     1.32
+++ Makefile.am 2001/09/23 05:00:10
...
...
Index: tests/Makefile.am
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/libcw/src/libcwd/tests/Makefile.am,v
retrieving revision 1.16
diff -u -d -p -r1.16 Makefile.am
--- tests/Makefile.am   2001/09/19 23:34:50     1.16
+++ tests/Makefile.am   2001/09/23 05:00:12

and patch uses in the latter case the same file as in the first case,
ignoring four instances of 'tests/'.

The docs of `patch' say that it will use the Index: line when BOTH,
old and new are missing - but CVS doesn't omnit both :/.

-- 
Carlo Wood <address@hidden>