Quoting Hans-Christoph Steiner hans@eds.org:
try "-p 2"
This is automated, so that would mean changing all the patches in packages/patches. I think it would be much easier to change that one patch to remove the path information.
the last one was another mail where i clicked "send" before thinking.
the "-p 2" would strip _at most_ the first 2 "path-elements" (see 'man patch' for a better explanation) of the filenames. so "pd/src/g_rtext.c" becomes "g_rtext.c", while "src/g_canvas.c" becomes "g_canvas.c" and "m_pd.h" stays the same.
so all patches should apply just as fine as they do now, and the string-support patch would apply too.
apart from that, i agree that all patches should be "normalized" in a way. (and that "string" really should be "blob")
mfg,.asr IOhannes