[pca] patch readme consistency

[Russ Oliver]

Martin,

Thanks!  That does help, quite a bit.  I figured that was the answer, but was hoping.  :)  I also figured I'd have to do something along the lines of what you've already scripted, so your work will save me a great deal of time.

Thanks!
Russ

-----Original Message-----
From: pca-bounces at lists.univie.ac.at [mailto:pca-bounces at lists.univie.ac.at] On Behalf Of Martin Paul
Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2010 1:08 AM
To: PCA (Patch Check Advanced) Discussion
Subject: Re: [pca] patch readme consistency

Russ Oliver wrote:
> When going through patch readmes, I'm curious to know if the
> information for each note stays the same across patches, or if they
> can be updated on each patch.  It seems, from what I've noticed, that
> if say, patch-07 has 10 notes with it, those same 10 notes are
> identical for all subsequent patches.  If an additional note is
> needed, it would go to note 11, and so on.  Is that correct?

Unfortunately that's not correct, at least not for all patches. 
Sometimes e.g. Note 5 is removed, and the following Notes are 
renumbered. Often the text of existing Notes is modified. For an 
example, look at the READMEs for 112233 rev. 11 and 12.

A better approach to what you want to achieve might be to use a 
graphical diff tool like "http://sourceforge.net/projects/tkdiff/". This 
makes it really easy to spot all the differences between two patch 
READMEs. You'll also see the changes outside the Notes, like required or 
obsolete patches.

Here I'm using this tool to check the READMEs of all new patches (or 
patch revisions) every day, and a tool like tkdiff is what makes that 
possible in a reasonable time at all. I'm attaching my small helper 
script "prr", which will download patch READMEs with pca and feed them 
to tkdiff with a command like:

   prr 112233 11 12

Hope that helps,

Martin.