Re: [media-types] Mime type for patch files?

[Clemens Ladisch <[e-mail]>]

Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> I have no idea how to identify the tool maintainers which currently
> recognize text/x-{patch,diff}.  Perhaps at least the maintainers of
> http://www.gnu.org/software/diffutils/ and
> http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/patch/ are relevant contributors to
> such discussion?  They do not really use or recognice MIME types, being
> command line tools, but are responsible for the typical producer and
> consumer of these files.

Pretty much all version control systems can generate patches.  However,
the default output typcially does not rely on MIME type detection but
uses custom formatting (in a GUI, or in HTML).  As far as I can see,
the only place where the MIME type might matter are e-mail attachments.

> I notice you mention application/*.  Is not text/* a better choice,
> given that for example patches in emails could be shown directly in the
> email and do not need a "viewer" to be readable to those of us receiving
> patches?

As it happens, cgit deliberately returns "text/plain" (e.g.,
<http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/patch.git/patch/?id=HEAD>).


Regards,
Clemens