Re: Creating patches using 'diff'

[Paul Eggert]

address@hidden writes:

> I'm creating rather large patches of the linux kernel source tree. I
> want to ignore $Header information so only actual code changes get
> picked up in the diff. I have read the man pages and googled
> extensively and cannot find any information on how to do this. My
> patch is littered with diffs that are picked up from files that only
> differ in their header information. Unfortunately, I do/did not
> manage the repositories (MKS) where this source tree was created and
> tracked, so the $Header differences are unavoidable as far I know.
> 
> Is it possible to create a patch file using diff that ignores
> differences in $Header entries?

You can try diff's -I option, but the results will be only
approximate, since 'diff' can't tell the difference between actual
$Header entries and strings that happen to look like $Header entries.

For reliable results, you need to ask MKS to not generate the
difference in the $Header entries in the first place.  rcsdiff's -kk
option does that; perhaps MKS supports it.