Re: [offtopic?] xdelta patch format wrapper

Junio C Hamano wrote:

Wondering about the confusion over this. When I talk about using xdelta, it's not the implementation in git. I intend to ship this xdelta.exe http://evanjones.ca/software/xdelta-win32.html (for Windows users at least!).

What I am sounding out is writing a wrapper written in PHP (I'd write it in Perl, but we're already shipping the PHP interpreter) that does all the parsing of the file, splits out the actual "xdelta" blobs and calls xdelta.exe to apply them to the relevant files.

Someone more talented than me would write it in perfectly portable C so that on day one works on Win32, OSX, unices and linuces. I can't so I'll look like a wimp but I'll deliver something workable ;-) But there's no reason the PHP or Perl implementation can't be considered a working prototype for a subsequent C version.

Specially if the file format makes sense. And we've been complaining about problems and ambiguities in the unified diff header. So... I'll rephrase my question

   "What would a unified diff header that didn't suck look like?"

(Ah, can't find the threads where the ambiguities of diff headers were discussed. Alas, the Google Gods aren't with me today.)

cheers,

m