Fwd: GNU patch: upcoming stable release; call for testing

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: GNU patch: upcoming stable release; call for testing
Date: Sunday 02 May 2010
From: Andreas Gruenbacher <agruen@suse.de>
To: info-gnu@gnu.org

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have happened as well: the project now uses GNU Automake, and the previous, static copy of the Gnulib library has been replaced by a git submodule.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- patch@gnu.org 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 <bug-patch@gnu.org>.

Thanks, Andreas

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