diff|patch

[forsyth@plan9.cs.york.ac.uk forsyth@plan9.cs.york.ac.uk]

>>anything like that.  It's just a fact that without patch applying these
>>updates is intolerably arduous, and without context diffs you have to
>>manually examine the files, split them into sections for patch, and

based on my experience over the years with diff|patch,
i am reluctant to apply patch to anything i care about and not
manually examine the files before and after, especially with patches coming
from a number of sources applied to (possibly) different base versions.

i'd be happier receiving a package that contained (say) the checksums of
the original files on the originating site, a set of diff -e changes,
and a script that checked before applying
that my copy of the source was the right version and also checks
for instance that the output file matches the new version
on the originating site (it might suffice to check
that diff applied to input and output files reproduces the diff output
in the package).  if precondition or postcondition fails, then i really do want to know about it.