Subject: Re: Allowing cygwin setup to patch up old versions
From: Robert Collins <[email-masked]>
To: chris <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]
Date: 02 Aug 2003 08:09:46 +1000

On Thu, 2003-07-31 at 23:55, chris wrote:

> The other major thing is that what I diff is (obviously) the .tar files, 
> not the .tar.bz2 files, as even a small change to a file usually totally 
> changes a compressed version of it. The only problem I can see this 
> causing is that the bzip2 files must be compressed in exactly the same 
> way. However I expect that everyone will compress their .bzip2s with the 
> default, and best setting. If it turns out these files drift then I may 
> be forced to MD5 the .tar files. I would like to keep the changes 
> required as small as possible tho.

A few notes:
You can get at the tar via the io archive streams in setup.
Shelling out to do this isn't an option.. setup is used in some places
to populate corporate mini-mirrors, without cygwin being installed. 
Regarding size of changes: I'd rather a series of small patches, each
taking one step to the goal, adding up to lots of changes, than a small
patch that does the job badly.

Cheers,
Rob
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