jdarcy@multimax.UUCP (Jeff d'Arcy) (10/11/89)
If you're having increasing trouble applying patches to your nethack 3.0 sources despite every precaution, here's a possible explanation. It seems that some versions of the "patch" program (including the version on uunet) are not very happy with a particular construct which is very common in the nethack patches, as follows: *** 24, 29 *** --- 24, 31 --- context line 1 context line 2 context line 3 + first additional line + second additional line context line 4 context line 5 context line 6 ************ After seeing the "*** x, y ***" line, the affected versions of patch expect (y-x+1) lines of context. If they don't get that context, as in the above example, they will complain about "unexpected ---" and quit, skipping any subsequent patches in that input file. This may not be detectable until you try to apply the *next* patch, and patch keeps looking for context lines that don't exist in your file because it never got patched properly. Don't even think about fixing the patch files before using them; there are hundreds of instances similar to the above in patchlevels 1-4. The only approach is to find a version of the patch program that recognizes this type of difference listing. Can someone else mail me sources for a version of patch that can deal with this type of difference, or will I have to make my own modifications? Jeff d'Arcy jdarcy@encore.com (508) 460-0500 Encore has provided the medium, but the message remains my own