jsr@xxxxxx wrote: > I got off my lazy arse and made a patch. I have no idea > whether I did things correctly, I just downloaded the gimp- > 1.1.32.tar.bz2 and gimp-1.2.0.tar.bz2 files, unpacked them, > did diff -u -r gimp-1.1.32 gimp-1.2.0 >gimp-patch, then > bzip2'd that. > > It's 534kb, and you can download it from > http://nova.student.utwente.nl/tc/gimp-patch-1.1.32- > 1.2.0.bz2 > > Merry Christmas, > > Lourens Commendable, and in keeping with the spirit of the season. Thank you. Personally, I would strongly urge anyone desiring to support a Gnome or GNU/Linux project to learn about CVS. See http://cvsbook.redbean.com. The tarballs and patch-sets are really meant for end-users who prefer to compile from source, but don't otherwise desire to get involved in maintenance and so don't have a strong motivation to keep a bleeding-edge source tree around. Patch sets are published with this laid-back attitude in mind, They lack the CVS administrative files which is a pity (but then, CVS admin directories don't always transplant themselves effortlessly. They depend on the context of particular users on particular clients using particular CVS servers) After the initial working directory download (which can be painful on a slow, intermittent connection, but not prohibitive -- see below) keeping a working CVS directory current is painless, *especially* if one has a slow or intermittent connection. With CVS update, the server sends patches, not whole files, and per-patch compression somewhat lowers the absolute amount of bits to transfer (Steinar notes this could be better - agreed, but while the compressor could optimize across the entire patch set, it would not be as graceful in recovering if the connection dropped) Should a connection drop, the CVS client and server pickup can pick up where they left off -- check- pointing is an adjunct process to synchronizing a working tree with the repository. In contrast, not all ftp servers support restarting in an analogous way. And as for time, one can set up a cron job to do nightly syncs when one is asleep or otherwise occupied with something else, so it just happens that the tree is updated when you awake or come back to work. (with a little extra cleverness, the job can be written to restart dropped connections). Across the three or four projects I'm interested in, a weekly CVS hookup is generally complete in about fifteen to twenty minutes. (36K modem). Clearly, I could reduce the connect time if I synced nightly (fewer deltas). Apart from that, you have the CVS utilities available to access file update logs, find out who committed what, when and where, and other whatnot (Such information is also avalable from http://cvs.gnome.org/bonsai as well for many gnome projects). Most of all, you are liberated from wondering if a patch set matches a code base, since your CVS working directory and the repository it is associated with have per-file version granularity. See http://www.gimp.org/devel_cvs.html My two U. S. cents Garry
