[development] create patch form

[Larry Garfield]

Does this need to be integrated into Drupal proper?  A "before + after = patch" web form should be not much more complicated than a pastebin.  All you need is to have it run on a server that has a cvs-compatible version of diff installed on it.  It may even already exist somewhere.  That wouldn't handle multiple files very well, but then I don't think any web form could without a great deal of extra complexity.

That said, I support the idea as I am often trying to fix things while at work where we have only svn, not cvs, and I haven't been able to roll proper diffs so I've been one of those guilty of posting "add this line here and it fixes it" type pseudo-patches lately.  Mea culpa. :-(

--Larry Garfield

On Wed, 07 Feb 2007 18:27:39 +0100, Robert Douglass <rob at robshouse.net> wrote:
> Boris Mann wrote:
>> On 2/7/07, Robert Douglass <rob at robshouse.net> wrote:
>>> This is actually a very good idea, imo. The best format for this would
>>> be to select the drupal version and file that you've changed (or
>>> multiple), upload the files, and then have the patch generated. I think
>>> this could be done securely as long as the files didn't land in the web
>>> directory. This would certainly be an invaluable service.
>>
>> I'm all for lowering barriers to entry. I wonder about the quality of
>> code from such a system. Figuring out patch/diff and CVS is good for
>> the soul, not to mention best practices of code development.
>>
> True. But I think we could get reasonable patches from such a system,
> and could do things like strip Windows line breaks, spaces at end of
> lines, and so forth. We could even run it through the code style script
> to preempt errors.