Hi guys,
The diff program has an option to --ignore-trailing-space (-Z for short) that will totally ignore changes of `\n` to `\n\r` and vice versa. And so you will see only 'actual' changes.
more importantly, patch(1) has an option --ignore-whitespace that helps applying patches to a revised Cabal file which suddenly comes along with CRLF line endings. Using that flag with diff(1) when creating the patch is a good idea, but it won't make the patch resistant against failures when it's applied to a modified Cabal file.
Another generally useful option is --ignore-space-change (-b for short) that will ignore indentation changes. Another option that you may use is --ignore-all-space.
This option is actually somewhat dangerous when applied in cases where the underlying source relies on layout to convey structure, because changes in indention will be lost with that flag enabled. Generally speaking, Hackage's policy of adding CRLFs to edited files seems like a bad idea. The least intrusive choice would be to follow whatever line-ending convention the original Cabal file has and to adhere to that. Anyway, I'll throw in a historical footnote for good measure: [1] Best regards, Peter [1] https://github.com/commercialhaskell/all-cabal-files/issues/11