patch submission format

[Greg Marr <gr...@alum.wpi.edu>]

At 04:21 PM 02/24/2000 -0600, you wrote:
>On Thu, Feb 24, 2000 at 12:46:44PM -0600, William A. Rowe, Jr. wrote:
> >   would you update http://dev.apache.org/patches.html to
> > reflect this?  I know we would all already be complying
> > if we weren't originally mislead.
>
>One reason that the page hasn't been changed yet is that unified diffs
>aren't available on all platforms. And trying to ask for unified diffs
>for some people and context diffs for the rest might get confusing.
>But you're right, we probably ought to note that somehow.

"We prefer that patches be submitted in unified diff format:

diff -u file-old.c file.c

but that isn't available on all platforms.  If your platform doesn't 
support unified diffs, please use a context diff instead:

diff -C3 file-old.c file.c

where file.c is the file affected. We should be able to feed the patch 
directly into the "patch" program and have it update the file or set of 
files. The -C3 is very important - line numbers can change on a daily basis 
in some code files, so having context is crucial to knowing where it all 
really goes."