wishlist: bzr and binary files

[John Arbash Meinel]

Alexander Belchenko wrote:
> It's a kind of wishlist: bzr should have ability to specify by user what
> files is binary. Currently I have some binary files under bzr version
> control that does not have '\0' at all inside. As result for this files
> showed very long diff. This diff completely non-informative.
> 
> I'd like to have ability to specify type of file when it initially added
> (as CVS does). I think this sort of info should be saved in inventory
> like for executable bit information. Therefore autodetect of binary
> files should work only at add phase. All other operations should use
> info from inventory when it need to know is this file binary or not.
> 
> -- 
> Alexander

Aaron (IIRC) has mentioned he would like it as well.
There has also been discussion about supporting line-ending changes. We
wrote up a spec for it in Canada back in November:
http://bazaar-vcs.org/LineEndings

It sort of all goes together. Doing line ending munging versus pure
binary files, versus text-like but no line changing, etc.

I think it deserves discussion. It is something that people have
requested. I personally am hesitant about anything that means what is
stored is not what I have on disk. But there is a reality that some
tools don't play well with everyone else, and a VCS can implement some
workarounds to get things to play well together again. (I'm looking at
*you* visual studio, though 7.1 is much better than 6).

John
=:->

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