Hi Mark,
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From:
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2010 14:27:11 +0000
To:
Subject: Re: [Lazarus] SVN user
waldo kitty wrote:
> On 12/29/2010 05:36, Peter E Williams wrote:
>> >> use the normal diff format for your patch.
>>
>> This is the step I don't understand.
>>
>> How do I use the normal diff format for my patch?
>>
>> I am still waiting for an answer for how the diff command works.
>
> have you never heard of a man page?? at your *nix command line, issue
> "man diff" without the quotes... learn man, use man, love man ;)
Steady on chaps. Let's just assume that what he's asking is how to use
diff when fixing a bug or making some other change in the context of
this group of projects, i.e. FPC and Lazarus.
When I specifically asked this question just a couple of days ago I was
told that the expected format was unified, not normal. Hence with the
original file in a directory ./old:
diff -u old/testSinPi.pas testSinPi.pas >testSinPi.diff
where the diff file allows the changes to be incorporated by the developers.
Thank you, Mark. This is the information that I am looking for. As you say, I need to use unified format, not normal. I would not have known the difference, being a newbie diff user, and the developers would no doubt have been upset with me using the wrong format.
Perhaps this would be a place to introduce the topic of how I would search for previous answers for my questions, as I have only recently resubscribed to this list (Lazarus) and I have missed many of those topics.
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Now I do agree that usage of man is a very basic skill if one hopes to
do anything with unix (including Linux et al.). However anybody who
wants to teach this point to a beginner really should be pointing out a
few additional facts:
* The output of man goes through a pager program. For a shell session
(i.e. not using xman etc.) you exit from this using q
I know about the q key.
* At the bottom of the manpage there is a SEE ALSO section which
frequently cites other commands, each with their own manpage.
I have seen the SEE ALSO sections of man.
* When a manpage is cited like readline(3), you access it using man 3
readline
Gotcha. I have not tried: man 3 readline.
* You can get a list of related commands etc. using the apropos
command, i.e. like apropos diff or apropos diff |less
That's news to me. Thanks. What is "apropos" short for? I guess you're about to tell me to use man apropos. :-) I didn't want to interrupt the flow of writing this message. I will check later.
juni at juni ~ $ man agropos
No manual entry for agropos
Well, apparently not everything is in the man pages.
* And finally, there are some commands, such as svn, which don't have
good manpages. In that context the correct question is "how do I use svn
to do X in the context of project Y", not "how does svn work".
I must confess that I simply jumped in and asked the question first. I find that there is a problem with information overload.
Or at least that's how I'd have put it when I was being paid to teach or
support.
Going back about 8 years ago, when I worked for the Royal Australian Navy, I was the tech support guy for a section of about 30 people. I was able to answer many basic questions, but of course some were too hard and that's when the IT section was called in. Those were the days of MS Windows and a UNCLASSIFIED Defence LAN and WAN networks. Interesting times. :-)
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