I have a script here that generates a diff from a CVS tree, and does the historically approved thing with ChangeLogs. And it avoids a CVS bug (got to move to a new CVS server...) And it avoids generated files. Ben: you might consider running this to generate your next version of big-patch, which will avoid the generated files in your output. : #-*- Perl -*- eval 'exec perl -w -S $0 ${1+"$＠"}' # Portability kludge if 0; # Author: Martin Buchholz use strict; (my $myName = $0) =~ s＠.*/＠＠; my $usage=" Usage: $myName [diff-arg ...] Make a CVS diff for submission as a patch to the maintainers.\n"; die $usage if grep (/^-h/, ＠ARGV); my $debug = defined $ENV{VERBOSE} || defined $ENV{DEBUG}; chomp (my ＠files = `cvs-mods`); my ＠ChangeLogs = grep ( m＠(^|/)ChangeLog$＠, ＠files); ＠files = grep (! m(a)(^|/)(ChangeLog|configure|depend|auto-autoloads.el|custom-load.el)$＠, ＠files); select(STDOUT); $| = 1; for my $ChangeLog (＠ChangeLogs) { print "\n$ChangeLog:\n\n"; system "cvs diff -w ＠ARGV $ChangeLog | sed -n 's/^\+//p' | grep -v '^\\+\\+\\+'"; } print "\n"; # cvs has an evil bug that if I give a list of files containing both # files in the current directory and in subdirectories, cvs ignores # the files in the current directory. sub Diff { ＠_ = ('cvs', 'diff', '-w', ＠_); die "Can't fork: $!\n" unless defined (my $pid = fork()); if ($pid == 0) { exec ＠_ or die "Can't exec ＠_: $!\n"; } waitpid($pid,0); } Diff grep ( m＠/＠, ＠files) if grep ( m＠/＠, ＠files); Diff grep (! m＠/＠, ＠files) if grep (! m＠/＠, ＠files);