[wdiff-bugs] Re: wdiff 0.6.0 released

[Santiago Vila]

On Tue, 30 Mar 2010, Martin von Gagern wrote:

> - http://patch-tracker.debian.org/patch/series/view/wdiff/0.5-21/04
> Unfortunately the Bug-Debian link given here seems unavailable, so I
> have to guess about the motivation. Is this patch aiming for the case
> where users have a pager which is a symlink to less, but doesn't contain
> less in its file name?

Yes, exactly. This is from sensible-pager(1) in a Debian system:

       sensible-editor,  sensible-pager  and  sensible-browser  make  sensible
       decisions  on  which  editor,  pager,  and web browser to call, respec-
       tively.  Programs in Debian can use these scripts as their default edi-
       tor, pager, or web browser or emulate their behavior.

This is the way manpages are shown using "less" if it's available, or "more"
if it is not, automatically.

> Considering it for inclusion, although I hate the concept of PATH_MAX.

The PATH_MAX thing is just how Charles C. Fu implemented it, but you
are of course free to rewrite it in a way that is more suitable for a
GNU package (I remember the days when many Debian packages failed to build
on the Hurd because of PATH_MAX not being defined there).

> * http://patch-tracker.debian.org/patch/series/view/wdiff/0.5-21/07
> * http://patch-tracker.debian.org/patch/series/view/wdiff/0.5-21/10
> * http://patch-tracker.debian.org/patch/series/view/wdiff/0.5-21/12
> wdiff has -v for --version. I believe it uses the lower case version
> consistently at least throughout the wdiff application itself. I might
> consider changing it to -V for consistency with other apps, and adding
> -v as a backwards-compatible option. But that will require more work,
> additional translations in particular. This will have to wait for 0.7.0
> if at all. In general I believe --version to be good enough. I
> personally seldom use that command line switch at all, on any app.

Those patches were applied because of the mismatch between manpage,
program behaviour, and output of wdiff --help. As it was not clear
for me which one was right, I first changed the program in 07, then
fixed the manpage in 10 and finally I reverted that in 12 to be
in line with wdiff 0.6.0 (hmm, it seems I forgot the output of --help).

There is really no need to be backwards compatible with 0.5, as this
option (either -v, -V or --version) *never* worked in a version
released as stable by GNU. Clearly, the safe bet for somebody
writing a portable script is to use --version, as that's in GNU
coding standards.

So, keeping -v is ok. In this case, supporting -V would be nice, but
that would be only for the benefit of Debian users.

OTOH, if you want to change it again, that would be ok as well, as
long as program, manpage and output of --help are in sync again :-).

As wdiff 0.6.0 is the first release where manpage, behaviour and
output --help matches at each other, I would prefer to keep -v.

> * http://patch-tracker.debian.org/patch/series/view/wdiff/0.5-21/11
> In current wdiff, the category is named as "Individual utilities"
> instead of "Utilities". Do you know whether this makes a difference in
> the generated index in any setup? Else I'll have to experiment.

The point in this patch is that there was no dircategory at all, so
whatever is the usual thing on a GNU texinfo manual will be fine.


Thanks a lot!