Yokemate of Keyboards
Posts: 2795 from 2006/3/21
From: Northern Calif...
Quote:
geit wrote:
A source patch aka diff file can be applied to the source with more or less no work.
The problem in this case is that you want to check each changed line, or new bugs or security holes could be introduced. Same goes for binary patches, where you need to trust the patch source.
So unlike source patches from official sites, where people look into it all the time, in this case the diff needs to be checked, even if it applies perfect it could patch unrelated stuff (intentional or unintentional) or even patch the right things wrong (e.g. due copy and paste changes).
So blindly throwing the stuff into the build system is a bad idea.
This is not about this diff in detail, but about all diffs.
Noone has use for a new crash bug that is caused a patched routine, which noone will check again, as it was supposed to be fixed by a diff before.
So what is the usual solution to such a patch being provided by a (relatively) unknown source/developer?
Can't it be applied to a copy of the source code to create a test binary, which could then be sent to several beta testers, to find out if it works as it should, and if it does not introduce new bugs, or break any existing function/feature of the original program?
I obviously don't know what the usual procedure is, when a 3rd party developer/programmer, provides a source patch for an existing program, but would like to see this move forward, as having an updated Odyssey for MorphOS, and OWB for AmigaOS4.x, is a very important part of the user experience, in today's world, where web browsing is such an integral part of everyone's life.
MorphOS - The best Next Gen Amiga choice.
