Fixpoint

Following my prior adventures, I reoriented my efforts toward some simpler changes to the v.pl tree, abandoning hopes of a robust patch creation tool built on Busybox diff.

I've split the changes into two patches. The first is "v_strict_headers", which I think would be of interest to any v.pl user. It tightens vpatch parsing to prevent false-positive header matches that could cause incorrect or nonsensical antecedent information to be extracted from valid vpatches. Following the precedent of the vtools vpatch program, this is done by requiring the string "diff " at the start of a line preceding the header, which works because all other lines of a diff "packet"⁽ⁱ⁾ start with either @, +, -, or space characters. This patch also backfills the manifest file and brings it fully in line with the spec.

The second patch, "v_keksum_busybox", swaps keksum and patch in for ksum and vpatch, making V presses possible again on systems with little more than a C toolchain, Busybox utilities and Perl.

I have also mirrored the rest of the VTree and contributed my own seals, which can be found in the same directory.

For deployment on systems with no previous V, there's a starter tarball which includes the tree pressed to v_keksum_busybox, the keksum code, and an install script. Take a look at what it does, then run as root, from the extracted directory:

# sh install.sh

Download

• v-pl-keksum-starter.tar.gz (signed)
• v_strict_headers.vpatch (seals: jfw, diana_coman)
• v_keksum_busybox.vpatch (seals: jfw)

The ill-fated vdiff

What follows is my abandoned attempt at vdiff in awk, supporting any conforming diff program. It identifies headers using a three-state machine to recognize the ---, +++, @@ sequence. This would still be fooled by a ---, +++ sequence followed immediately by another hunk, except that the lines of context prevent this, unless the change comes at the end of the file in which case there can't be another hunk prior to the next file header.

It works as far as parsing both GNU and Busybox diff output, produces working vpatches in the GNU case, and could even be expanded to do the same for Busybox. But since fully-reproducible output seems to be desirable, I can't presently justify further work in this direction or recommend it over the vtools vdiff.

#!/bin/sh
export LC_COLLATE=C
diff -uNr $1 $2 | awk -v sq=\' '
function shell_quote(s) {
	gsub(sq, sq "\\" sq sq, s);
	return sq s sq;
}

function vhash(path) {
	if (path == "/dev/null") return "false";
	qpath = shell_quote(path);
	cmd = "test -e " qpath " && keksum -s256 -l512 -- " qpath;
	gotline = cmd | getline rec;
	close(cmd);
	if (!gotline) return "false";
	split(rec, parts);
	return parts[1];
}

function print_header(line) {
	split(line, parts);
	print parts[1], parts[2], vhash(parts[2]);
}

{
	if (state == 0) {
		if ($0 ~ /^---/) {
			from = $0;
			state = 1;
		}
		else {
			print;
		}
	}
	else if (state == 1) {
		if ($0 ~ /^\+\+\+/) {
			to = $0;
			state = 2;
		}
		else if ($0 ~ /^---/) {
			print from;
			from = $0;
		}
		else {
			print from;
			print;
			state = 0;
		}
	}
	else if (state == 2) {
		if ($0 ~ /^@@/) {
			print_header(from);
			print_header(to);
			print;
			state = 0;
		}
		else if ($0 ~ /^---/) {
			print from;
			print to;
			from = $0;
			state = 1;
		}
		else {
			print from;
			print to;
			print;
			state = 0;
		}
	}
}

END {
	if (state == 1) {
		print from;
	}
	else if (state == 2) {
		print from;
		print to;
	}
}'

1. Or what else do you call the header and sequence of hunks associated with a single file? [^]