From: Johannes Schindelin Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 18:05:48 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH] Re-re-re-fix common tail optimization Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <7vsl218aqd.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org> Hi, On Mon, 17 Dec 2007, Junio C Hamano wrote: > Johannes Schindelin writes: > > >> >> But as at least one released version of GNU diff has a pretty > >> >> serious bug, I would rather not rely too much on diff. (BTW this > >> >> was the reason I wanted --no-index so badly.) > >> >> > >> >> So yeah, the second "diff" cannot be "git diff". Maybe "cmp", but > >> >> not "git diff". > >> > > >> > Well cmp would be fine as well, seeing all we want is a boolean "is > >> > this the same or not" answer. (I'm not familiar with the GNU diff > >> > bug you speak of, but was it so bad that it couldn't even get > >> > *that* answer right?) > >> > >> Heh, there's at least one distribution out there (Suse 10.1) that > >> comes with a *cmp* that doesn't get that answer right if its output > >> is connected to /dev/null, which is the case when you simply 'make > >> test'. > > > > Yeah. That's what it was. I even posted a patch to GNU diff, only to > > find out that it was already fixed in CVS. Sigh. > > Wait. Are you still talking about diff or cmp, or are you saying that > your earlier statement about avoiding GNU diff due to its bugs is > unfounded? I do not remember offhand. I only remembered that it was the GNU diff package. But maybe it was only the "cmp" tool. Symptoms were that tests were failing without "-i", but succeeding with "-i". Okay, I found the mail: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/25107/match=cmp Seems it was only "cmp". Sorry for the noise, Dscho