Dean Rasheed <dean.a.rasheed@gmail.com> writes:
> BTW, I had no problems applying both the original patch and Chetan
> Suttraway's version. The only difference between the patches seems to
> be that the original is in context format, and Chetan Suttraway's is
> in unified format.
> Which format do hackers actually prefer? The wiki page
> http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Working_with_Git#Context_diffs_with_Git
> suggests context format, but then the linked example
> http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Creating_Clean_Patches is in unified
> format. Do people care, or are both formats OK?
Some people find one or the other more readable. (I'm in the camp that
says unified format is great for isolated single-line changes and
utterly unreadable for anything more complex, but apparently there are
people who prefer it.)
For detailed review/commit purposes, it doesn't matter that much as long
as the patch applies cleanly, since it's easy to apply it and then get
a diff in the other format if you prefer reading the other. However,
if you're just hoping people will eyeball the patch in email and comment
on it, readability matters. If the patch requires manual fixup in order
to get it to apply anymore, readability is also a concern, since you're
dependent on the committer not misinterpreting the hunks he has to patch
in by hand.
regards, tom lane