Re: diff-apply-hunk broken

[Andre Spiegel <spiegel@gnu.org>]

On Mon, 2004-03-29 at 16:19, Stefan Monnier wrote:

> Actually, no: the remote diff has some extra lines before the diff itself.
> At least with CVS it does.  But: why do you care?

I find it valuable feedback when I can see at a glance whether a diff
was computed locally or remotely.  A simple example where it might help
is this: A user makes a mistake setting up his vc-cvs-stay-local
variable.  As a result, he gets remote diffs when he actually wants them
to be local.  If he can't tell from the output what happened, it might
be difficult for him to realize the problem.

But if the disply is still different anyway, that's enough of a visual
clue I think.

> > Second, I couldn't find documentation for the "-L" option in the GNU
> > diff manual, although it is quite happy with that option (--label, which
> > seems equivalent, is documented).
> 
> The manpage definitely mentions -L as does `diff --help'.

What version are you referring to?  In GNU diffutils 2.8.1-6 (Debian
unstable), diff -L is neither mentioned in the manpage, the info manual,
nor diff --help.  The -L option is mentioned, however, for diff3 (in all
three places).  As far as I can tell, 2.8.1 is the most recent version. 
Please confirm whether you have a version where diff -L is documented. 
Otherwise, I'll file a bug report to the diffutil guys.