GNU patch: upcoming stable release; call for testing

[Andreas Gruenbacher]

I am pleased to announce that there is progress towards the next stable 
release of GNU patch.  This is a call for testing so that things will work as 
expected, on as many platforms as possible.

The upcoming release will include several new features:


* Support for most features of the "diff --git" format: renames and copies,
  permission changes, symlink diffs.  (Binary diffs are not supported yet;
  patch will complain and skip them.)

* Support for double-quoted filenames: when a filename in a context diff
  starts with a double quote, it is interpreted as a C string literal.  The
  escape sequences \\, \", \a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t, \v, and \ooo (a three-digit
  octal number between 0 and 255) are recognized.

* Refuse to patch read-only files by default, or at least warn when patching
  such files with --force or --batch.

* Refuse to apply a normal patch to a symlink.  (Previous versions of patch
  were wrongly replacing the symlink with a regular file.)

* When a timestamp specifies a time zone, honor that instead of assuming the
  local time zone (--set-date) or Universal Coordinated Time (--set-utc).

* Support for nanosecond precision timestamps.


Behind the scenes, some infrastructure changes have happened as well: the 
project now uses GNU Automake, and the previous, static copy of the Gnulib 
library has been replaced by a git submodule.


The project home with the development repository, bug tracker, and bug-
address@hidden mailing list archive is located at:

  http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/patch

Development snapshots will be made available on:

  ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/patch/

Previous stable releases are available at:

  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/patch/

Please send bug reports or suggestions to <address@hidden>.

Thanks,
Andreas