Why are unified diffs only "grudgingly" accepted?

[François Pinard]

[Thomas Wouters]

> The readability of unified versus context diffs is mostly a matter of
> personal opinion [...]

Exactly.  Most maintainers have an opinion, users often have their own,
and this is all a minor matter, since diffs are easily converted from one
format into the other.  The conversion is so easy to do for the maintainer
that it is not worth imposing rules to all users, given that users may have
to relate to many maintainers, and should not have to remember the tastes and
distastes of each maintainer: these are only personal opinions, after all.

> Like I said before, it's *no use* sending in patches if noone has time
> to check them in.  [...]  Would you prefer it if noone had time to work
> on Python ?

Aren't you abusing a bit of hyperbolic style, here? :-)

> 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 do not see how I'm being unfair, as I never said I had trouble with
Guido so far.  Yet, I would not welcome trouble, which I would read as an
invitation to _not_ contribute, or at least not with a friendly spirit.

> The difference between SourceForge or a mailinglist without a searchable
> archive is huge in their time, however, and several people have offered
> to upload your patches if you can't do it yourself.

Indeed.  It's all perfect, as long as users are not forced into too
un-natural methods for them.  Every maintainer has his/her own work methods.
It is not important in the end who loaded a report into the methods of a
particular maintainer, this can be done either the user, the maintainer,
or a kind helper in between, as long as the contribution is not ignored.
The responsibility of complying with each maintainer internal methods does
not pertain to users.  Of course, the user could be invited to use these,
but the invitation should not be transformed into a required condition.

You know, there is no real problem, as long as everybody stays reasonable.
(Trying to impose around one's own work methods is not reasonable, to me.)

-- 
François Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard