Why are unified diffs only "grudgingly" accepted?

[Moshe Zadka]

[Moshe Zadka]
(about why diff -c is preferred over diff -u)
> Guido doesn't. That's reason enough really -- it's the same as asking
> "why should I follow the Python style guidelines?": no real reason for
> that style, but Guido likes it, and there has to be some consistency.

[Francois Pinard]
> I understand that `ed-style' diffs are hardly useful, and that we can
> expect users to understand this.  However, between `-c' and `-u' lies
> a matter of preference, and I always found sad having to know that this
> maintainer strictly prefers `-u', while this other strictly prefers `-c'.
> When one relates with many maintainers, it becomes pretty cumbersome to

[MZ]
It's just like saying that GNU prefers the curly braces on a line of their
own while Guido prefers the opening brace to be on the same line as the
opening keyword. Yes -- it would be nice if there was interproject
consistency -- but the most important thing is that there will be
intraproject consistency.

[FP]
> As I wrote a few times in the past, it progressively becomes more difficult
> for users to report bugs than it used to be

[MZ]
I doubt it -- I think it has become easier. I do agree that moving to a
web-only interface is a temporary setback, but it is only temporary (I'm
sure that in a few months we'll all be using Ping's Roundup), and in the
meantime, well, we have to roll with the punches. This are all trailers of
the move to BeOpen, which is itself, IMHO, a good thing.

[FP]
> , and this is not good news to me,
> as it taints a tiny bit the pleasure of using free software.  It also conveys
> the message that our-maintainer-time-is-so-precious-that-yours-is-not-really.

[MZ]
The maintainer time *is* precious -- consider Guido has to deal with much
more e-mail then other maintainers, simply because his product is
successful. Note that the GNU guidelines about maintainer time are even
stricter. It's all a matter of balance: I do think that as a matter of
gratitude, I can afford the time to read whatever guidelines the
maintainer has set in place to make his job of supporting the software
easier.

[FP]
> I'm a maintainer and a user; and I care about my time whatever hat I bear!

[MZ]
But a maintainer spends more time over user bug reports then the users,
usually -- certainly if she's a good maintainer. So the correct thing to
do is to worry more about the time you spend in the maintainer hat.

[FP]
> Back to the diff-style affair, I got a program `unify' from Wayne Davison
> (Borland) which I integrated into `wdiff' (as the `diffutils' maintainer
> was sadly not interested).  This program converts from `-u' to `-c', or
> vice-versa, and is trivial to use.  Best would be that maintainers who
> have a strong preference for one format over the other use this program,
> and just leave users alone about their own preferences over this detail.

[MZ]
I think that demanding that developers install another tool (which must be
easy to use on MacOS, Windows and all Unices) is more of a hassle then
demanding that users learn to pass the correct flag to diff.

-- 
Moshe Zadka <moshez at math.huji.ac.il>
There is no IGLU cabal.
http://advogato.org/person/moshez