Re: [git pull] drm-fixes

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>]

On Mon, 26 Jan 2009, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > 
> > There must be easier ways to do so I think.
> 
> Um. Yes. Something like
> 
> 	git am -s -C1
> 
> which ends up requiring just a single line of context for the patch to 
> apply, exactly like the GNU 'patch' program.
> 
> The difference being that GNU patch does that incredibly broken thing by 
> default, and makes it easy to apply a patch that was already applied quite 
> by mistake, because it still works. Git will require you to say explicitly 
> that it's ok to have just a single line of context.

Btw, I _really_ don't want people using -C1 by default. It really is a 
broken default, and there is a reason why I dislike GNU patch for applying 
almost any patch that makes any sense what-so-ever.

So please work with the stricter git defaults. You can still get patches 
that silently apply even if they don't work (there's nothing magical about 
three lines of context - a patch may still apply in the wrong place), but 
it's a lot harder to get those silent screw-ups.

Then, when the strict model doesn't work, take a look by hand, and try to 
figure out why it didn't work. If you decide that you really do want to 
apply the patch, and the changes near-by that causes it to not apply any 
more were really not relevant and don't affect the behaviour of the patch, 
_that_ is when you can use -C1 and --whitespace=fix etc to make it apply 
despite not being a 100% match.

So don't use -C1 and whitespace-fixup blindly. That way lies madness. It 
may _seem_ to be much easier, and yes, 95% of the time it will do the 
right thing, but when it doesn't, it silently does bad things. Please only 
use those flags when you've literally spent a few seconds of a real human 
brain to look at why they are needed.

			Linus