changesets and variance adjusted patching

[William Uther]

On Thursday, April 10, 2003, at 01:21  PM, Tom Lord wrote:
>
> First, it's worth noting that our two different definitions of
> variance_adjust will give different results in the general case.  Mine
> reflects the definition in kfogel's docs -- yours is something
> different.

I don't think so.  Can you give an example of that?

I actually gave an example of a binary version of the VAP algorithm on 
the svn-dev list a while back.  It used VAP at the byte level, instead 
of at the line level.  It was similar to your suggested VAP algorithm 
in that you could adjust the 'soft-conflict' zone around the changes.  
I can't find a reference to it - the svn list archives are hopeless.

> Second, I agree that the adjust algorithm and variations on it are the
> essense -- the "do one thing well" core -- of diff4/v.a.p.    Given a
> tool that does that, there are countless variations on kfogel's
> write-up, all giving potentially-interesting different results, and
> all expressable as function compositions of delta and adjust*.
> "diff48", anyone?

Ahh - I guess part of the issue here is that 'adjust' is not amazingly 
well defined.  kfogel's document talks about text.  We'd have to change 
that to handle trees.  I'm assuming that most of these variations fall 
into the noise.

Stay well,

Will        :-}

--
Dr William Uther                            National ICT Australia
Phone: +61 2 9385 6926             School of Computer Science and 
Engineering
Email: willu at cse.unsw.edu.au             University of New South Wales
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