Re: RCS should use "diff --label", not "diff -L", with GNU diff

Thien-Thi Nguyen <[email protected]> Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:24:27 +0100
Newsgroups gmane.comp.version-control.rcs.bugs
Message-ID <[email protected]>
() Paul Eggert <[email protected]>
() Sun, 08 Jan 2012 12:06:00 -0800

   Currently RCS uses GNU diff's -L option.
   That option has been undocumented since diffutils 2.8
   (released in March 2002) and the option is intended to
   be replaced sometime soon with a different meaning.

   Can you please fix RCS so that it uses "diff --label"
   instead of "diff -L"?  That will make RCS immune to this
   planned change.  Thanks.

Thanks for the tip.  Do you mean diff3(1)?  I see:

 $ diff3 --version | sed 1q
 diff3 (GNU diffutils) 3.0
 
 $ diff3 --help | sed '/-L/!d'
   -L ETICHETTA  --label=ETICHETTA  Usa ETICHETTA invece del nome del file.

Perhaps this is a Debian-specific anomaly?
BTW, diff(1) seems to be moving in the opposite direction:

  ffd622a 2011-03-18 docs: info should mention -L
  c549fc6 2011-03-18 docs: diff --help should mention -L

(This is "git log" output from the savannah diffutils repo.)