Why are unified diffs only "grudgingly" accepted?

[Cees de Groot]

Thomas Wouters  <thomas at xs4all.net> said:
>I think you're being very unfair to Guido and the others who
>do most of the work on Python: the difference between sending in a context
>diff and a unified diff is *one character* in a command line, and they *do*
>accept unified diffs. 

I think the poster had a point. It's hard to keep a tab on what sort of
diffs everybody wants. Furthermore, I think it is rude, as a software
developer, to reject patches because of format nitpicking (yes, I do
develop open source software so I know that part of the game). The people
who made the patch did a lot of work for you (as y'all know, a one-liner
patch can be the result of hours and hours of work), and converting
between diff type A and diff type B, even without specialized tools,
is as simple as "patch ...; cvs diff".

A good patch starts with a blob of text "selling" the contents of the
patch to the code owner anyway. A good story is far more important than
format A, B or C. The burden on the contributor is to provide a good story
and a working patch. The burden on the maintainer is to try to give the
patch a fair judgement. Both parties invest a lot of work, so I don't
see a reason at all for one of the parties kicking the other one around.

(old-style edit diffs should be banned, because they're too fragile. But
that's a clear technical reason).
-- 
Cees de Groot               http://www.cdegroot.com     <cg at cdegroot.com>
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