patch-2.5.9

[ABCD]

Patch 2.5.9 was released on 2003-05-20. The current LFS book is still using 2.5.4, released on 1999-08-30. Given that the current version is 5 years old, and the version in the book is 10 years old, I think it might be overdue for an upgrade.

[randy@…]

It used to be on the Gnu alpha site: ​http://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/ but is no longer there. The only place I can find it is:

​http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/p/patch/patch_2.5.9.orig.tar.gz

I do remember a discussion from a few years ago about moving to this version, but since it was only on the 'alpha' server and not the main Gnu server, it was determined to stay with what we have (as it works).

Not sure if we want to revisit this or not, but looking around today I noticed that most Distro's are using the 2.5.9 version in one way or another. Every one of the Distro's, however, is using it patched in one way or another.

Makes me wonder if it is safe to use unpatched. The NEWS file in the package mentions some bug-fixes and some minor updates, but not much really. I didn't look at the actual ChangeLog.

I think I'll post this over on -dev just to see if there is any inputf from the community. I will say this, I've never had a problem with the 2.5.4 version with anything, ever.

[Matthew Burgess]

Like Randy, I don't really care about this. patch-2.5.4 has never ever caused problems for me and I don't see anything particularly interesting in the NEWS file that we'd want to upgrade for. "If it aint broke, don't fix it" :-)

That said, if someone does want to supply a patch that brings the book up to patch-2.5.9, with any relevant upstream and/or distro patches, I will gladly review and apply it. It just scratches an itch that I don't have, and therefore I don't want to spend time scratching it myself.

Regards,

Matt.

[bdubbs@…]

Changing to 7.0 milestone. The package is at ​ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/diffutils/patch-2.5.9.tar.gz

It still needs the mkstemp patch and the fixes patches.

patch -Np1 -i ../patch-2.5.9-mkstemp-1.patch
patch -Np1 -i ../patch-2.5.9-fixes-1.patch
./configure --prefix=/usr
make
make install

The fixes patch gives:

patching file pch.c
Hunk #2 succeeded at 370 (offset 4 lines).

The Makefile does not honor DESTDIR.

[Arthur Demchenkov]

I had a problem with patch-2.5.4 about 2 or 3 years ago, when tried to upgrade kernel (I don't remember version, sorry). It failed to patch one file. I had no idea why. I checked the patch file manually and saw everything was OK there. I edited needed file manually, made diff -Naur and then tried to apply my patch. No success! I just upgraded patch to version 2.5.9 and had no problems since then. And every time I reinstall LFS, I just install patch-2.5.9 instead of the crap version the book offers.

[robert@…]

The mkstemp patch is not from upstream and is disputed by the maintainer, saying that mktemp is being used correctly. The fixes patch is from upstream, and fixes a dos2unix bug that is not present in patch-2.5.4. Patch-2.5.4 has a 'patch -V foo' bounds checking bug, which causes a segfault, and is fixed in 2.5.9. If LFS bumps to 2.5.9, I suggest only using the fixes patch. If LFS stays with 2.5.4, the -V bug is not known to be exploitable but is one of the reasons that most distributions have bumped to 2.5.9.

[Matthew Burgess]

Is the fixes patch really necessary? It fixes one bug which doesn't seem particularly severe - how common are patches that contain trailing CRs? This would seem to only affect patches that have been transferred from Windows to Linux and haven't had dos2unix or similar run on them.

[robert@…]

These patches are rare, but they do exist. BLFS sometimes points to non-LFS patches on the maintainer's website, and some maintainers run Windows (kde, for example). I think that's how I found this bug, and it wasn't easy to figure out because the patch looks fine in an editor.

[Matthew Burgess]

Fixed in r8795.