i386 vs amd64?

[Chuck Swiger]

On Aug 7, 2008, at 2:34 AM, Milan Obuch wrote:
>> 5) Get familiar with mergemaster, specifically the side-by-side
>> interactive diff feature.  It looks scary the first time around,
>> but once you learn that "r" applies the stuff you see on the right,
>> and "l" applies the stuff you see on the left, you should be fine.
>
> Funny observation: "r" is on LEFT keyboard side, "l" is on RIGHT  
> keyboard
> side. I for one have problem at times precisely for this reason, but  
> I know
> this is an important step and one need to act with great care.

Fortunately, the diffutils maintainer has accepted a patch to allow  
"1" and "2" (similar to http://www.pkix.net/~chuck/sdiff2.diff);  
hopefully your system is recent enough to include that change:

Regards,
-- 
-Chuck

Begin forwarded message:
> From: Chuck Swiger <cswiger at mac.com>
> Date: June 13, 2007 11:57:34 AM PDT
> To: LI Xin <delphij at delphij.net>
> Cc: FreeBSD Current <freebsd-current at freebsd.org>
> Subject: Re: RFC: diff(1) update
>
> On Jun 13, 2007, at 2:10 AM, LI Xin wrote:
>> I have done a first cut of bringing latest GNU diffutils (2.8.1) to  
>> the
>> FreeBSD base system.  This consists two parts of changes:
>> [ ... ]
>> Some notes:
>> - I have tried to keep as most our local features (DIFF_OPTIONS,  
>> etc),
>> but we still need to have some test cases to figure out whether  
>> there is
>> regression.
>> - Local changes are now maintained as patchsets.
>> - Still need to find a better way to handle local manpage changes...
>>
>> Comments?
>
> Thanks for looking into updating diffutils, Xin.
>
> Paul Eggert, the diffutils maintainer, has recently adopted a patch  
> for sdiff which allows using "1" and "2" in addition to "l" and "r",  
> which is exceptionally useful when people are running mergemaster.   
> Also, v2.8.6 also includes a fix for invoking an editor in sdiff mode:
>
> Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
>> Chuck Swiger <chuck at pkix.net> writes:
>>> At least with diff-2.7 or thereabouts, invoking the
>>> external editor via "e l" or "e r" would always fail and return the
>>> warning from this line of diff code:
>>>
>>>   fatal ("Subsidiary editor failed");
>>
>> You can double-check, but I think that bug was fixed here:
>>
>> 2004-04-12  Paul Eggert  <eggert at twinsun.com>
>>
>> 	* NEWS, configure.ac (AC_INIT): Version 2.8.6.
>>        ...
>> 	* src/sdiff.c (check_child_status): Renamed from ck_editor_status,  
>> and
>> 	accept a new arg MAX_OK_STATUS.  All callers changed.
>> 	Handle status 126/127 as per POSIX.
>>
>
> 	------
>
>> Good point, thanks.  I installed this:
>>
>> 2007-06-06  Paul Eggert  <eggert at cs.ucla.edu>
>>
>> 	* NEWS:  Mention new sdiff aliases 1 and 2 for l and r.
>> 	* doc/diff.texi (Merge Commands): Likewise.
>> 	* src/sdiff.c (give_help): Give help for them.
>> 	(edit): Support them.
>>
>> Index: NEWS
>> ===================================================================
>> RCS file: /cvsroot/diffutils/diffutils/NEWS,v
>> retrieving revision 1.25
>> diff -u -p -r1.25 NEWS
>> --- NEWS	5 Sep 2006 23:02:32 -0000	1.25
>> +++ NEWS	6 Jun 2007 23:40:12 -0000
>> @@ -14,6 +14,8 @@ User-visible changes since 2.8.7 (in "ve
>>   "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
>>   Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
>>
>> +* sdiff now understands '1' and '2' as synonyms for 'l' and 'r'.
>> +
>> Version 2.8.7 contains no user-visible changes.
>
> -- 
> -Chuck
>
>