man rredtool (1): merge or apply a very restricted subset of ed patches

SYNOPSIS

rredtool --help

rredtool [ options ] --merge patches...

rredtool [ options ] --patch file-to-patch patches...

rredtool directory newfile oldfile mode

DESCRIPTION

rredtool is a tool to handle a subset of ed patches in a safe way. It is especially targeted at ed patches as used in Packages.diff and Sources.diff. Is also has a mode supposed to be called from reprepro as Index Hook to generate and update a Packages.diff/Index file.

MODI

One of the following has to be given, so that rredtool know that to do.

--version

Print the version of this tool (or rather the version of reprepro which it is coming with).

--help

Print a short overview of the modi.

--patch

The first argument of rredtool is the file to patch, the other arguments are ed patches to apply on this one.

--merge

The arguments are treated as ed patches, which are merged into a single one.

--reprepro-hook (or no other mode flag)

Act as reprepro index hook to manage a Packages.diff/index file. That means it expects to get exactly 4 arguments and writes the names of files to place into filedescriptor 3.

If neither --patch nor --merge is given, this mode is used, so you can just put

DebIndices: Packages Release . .gz /usr/bin/rredtool

into reprepro's conf/distributions file to have a Packages.diff directory generated. (Note that you have to generate an uncompressed file (the single dot). You will need to have patch, gzip and gunzip available in your path.)

OPTIONS

--debug: Print intermediate results or other details that might be interesting when trying to track down bugs in rredtool but not intresting otherwise.
--max-patch-count=count: When generating a Packages.diff/Index file, put at most count patches in it (not counting possible apt workaround patches).
-o|--output: Not yet implemented.

ENVIRONMENT

TMPDIR, TEMPDIR: temporary files are created in $TEMPDIR if set, otherwise in $TMPDIR if set, otherwise in /tmp/.

REPORTING BUGS

Report bugs or wishlist requests the Debian BTS (e.g. by using reportbug reperepro) or directly to <[email protected]>.