Here is a copy of the message that I sent to gnu-arch-users

Hi Tom,

I figured out the problem I had with a botched changeset.  This is a
tla bug.

Suppose you have a project with a binary file foo.gz and suppose you
modify this file.  If you try to commit as follows:

echo foo.gz > ,,FILES
tla commit -L "watch me die" --file-list ,,FILES

then it will output the following error message AND check in the
botched changeset anyway:

arch_apply_changeset: internal error (patch(1) returned odd status)
   patch(1) exit status: 2

patch: ** Only garbage was found in the patch input.

The reason is that the diff file contains the line:

Files orig/foo.gz and mod/foo.gz differ

The reason for this is that make-changeset-files.c does not implement
the correct logic for dealing with the return status of
arch_invoke_diff.  In fact it doesn't deal with it at all.

After looking at the code, I am under the impression that you must
have had some sort of plan to eventually dump
arch_make_files_changeset in favor of a call to arch_make_changeset
with an appropriate limits_spec argument, but that that hasn't
happened yet.  Am I correct, or completely off base?

If I am right, should I attempt to make this change?

Cheers,