Matthieu Moy  wrote:

quoted text
> Jakub Narebski  writes:

>

>> While email can be used to exchange patches (git-format-patch to

>> generate patches, git-send-mail to send patches if you don't want to

>> use ordinary email client, git-am to apply patches) it cannot be used

>> to exchange all information (one cannot send for example tags, or

>> merge commits).

>

> In bzr, the "bundle" appears like a patch, but it actually contain the

> same information as the revision(s) it contains (I believe this

> applies to hg and Darcs too). A bundle can be used almost like a

> branch. That's a key point, since revision identity is not based on

> content's hash, so applying a patch is very different from merging a

> bundle.

The patch generated by git-format-patch has author information (in

"From:" header), original commit date (in "Date:" header), commit

message (first line in "Subject:", rest in message body), place for

comments which are not to be included in commit message, diffstat for

easier patch review, and git extended diff (with information about

renames detection, mode changes, 7-characters wide shortcuts of file

contents identifiers). It does not record parent information, original

comitter and comitter date, which branch we are on etc. You can quite

easily provide ordering of patches.
Sending patches via email prohibits first line of commit message to be

enclosed in brackets (subject usually is "[PATCH] Commit description"

or "[PATCH n/m] Commit description") and enforces git convention of

commit message to consist of first line describing commit shortly,

separated by empty line from the longer description and signoff lines.
"Bundle" equivalent, although binary in nature, would be thin pack.
>> It is very usefull tool to have for "accidental" developer.

quoted text
>

> That's the key point, but patch review for non-accidental developpers

> is also good :-).

How very true...
>> BTW. git can provide binary patch for binary files (e.g. adding

quoted text
>> favicon for gitweb in git.git).

>

> Bazaar's bundle use base64 encoding for binaries. I don't think that's

> efficient binary diff (xdelta-like) though. Aaron has been fighting

> quite a lot with MUA and MTA mixing up the patches (line ending in

> particular) ...

If I remember correctly git binary diff format is xdiff based, and uses

kind of ascii85 encoding (PostScript).
--

Jakub Narebski

Poland

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