newformat format change

[Andrew S. Townley]

I don't know if you will think this is relevant or not, but we're doing
a lot of work with versioning of XML data elements and how it should
work.  What we've come up with is a set of guidelines so that it can be
done sensibly (at least for us).

The guidelines can be found here:  http://sdec.reach.ie/rigs/rig0006.

Whatever way you decide to add version information, it needs to be
thought out pretty well or it'll become a royal pain to maintain/process
going forward.

Hope this helps,

ast

On Fri, 2005-09-30 at 16:30, John A Meinel wrote:
> Robert Collins wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 	I'm about to change newformat to reduce the duplication of having
> > text_version and name_version in inventory entries - it will be just
> > 'revision'. This is simpler, and will give us a nice index back from the
> > weave TOC to every change that occured to a file, making per file log
> > fast.
> > 
> > Do I need to write a format converter for this. Or put another way - who
> > is using newformat for live data ?
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > Rob
> 
> Actually, one request that I would like to make (since we are breaking 
> all the files anyway) is to put a version number in all of the files 
> that we write.
> 
> Right now, there is a version in branch-format, and then another one in 
> .weave files, but I would like to see something similar in the xml files.
> 
> That makes it much easier to not break backwards compatibility because 
> you can tell what format a file is in.
> 
> The way I see it, we can do it a few different ways. It is a little bit 
> complicated by the fact we have to write well formed XML. But we could 
> use a processing indicator like <?version 0.4?>
> 
> Or we could do:
> 
> <revision version="0.5">
> 	<rev_info id="blahblah" put_stuff="here" />
> 	<parents>
> 	</parents>
> 	<meta-info>
> 	</meta-info>
> </revision>
> 
> Same thing for inventories. Since we already have an empty inventory 
> tag, we could just do:
> 
> <inventory version="0.5">
> 	<file ... />
> 	<directory ... />
> 	...
> </inventory>
> 
> It would be a minimal change to the inventory schema. It might change 
> the revision schema a bit more, but I really think it could be worth it. 
> Since it makes maintaining compatibility much easier. (You can start 
> reading the entry, and then switch based on what version you read).
> 
> Now, it might be that you are thinking to make these files always have a 
> fixed version relative to the branch-format. Which is okay, but since 
> they are separate files, it would be nice to have a separate version 
> declaration.
> 
> John
> =:->

***************************************************************************************************
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.  Access to this email by anyone other than the intended addressee is unauthorized.  If you are not the intended recipient of this message, any review, disclosure, copying, distribution, retention, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it is prohibited and may be unlawful.  If you are not the intended recipient, please reply to or forward a copy of this message to the sender and delete the message, any attachments, and any copies thereof from your system.
***************************************************************************************************