Binary file handling discussion

[Hanns-Steffen Eichenberg]

On 11/6/06, Nicholas Allen <allen at ableton.com> wrote:
>
>
> > Let's assume there is only a central configuration file and no
> > individual file properties
> > like CVS or SVN have.
> >
> > What happens to a file that is moved or renamed? What if i configured to
> > handle xml files in 'configuration' directories different than other
> > xml files, and
> > then rename the 'configuration' directory to 'config', forgetting to
> > also change the
> > central .bzrtypes file. Not a good idea at all!
> >
> > So that seems to be the reason why CVS is using special file
> > attributes, but
> > has also a central file describing the default attributes for new files.
> I agree that one wants to store properties and meta data with the file
> itself and not separately so that it survives a rename or move.
>
> There needs to be a file that determines the default set of meta data
> for a file that is *newly added* but this would only be used for new
> files. This is basically the way svn does it but svn only has one config
> file per user and it is not possible to store the file in the
> repository. This means that every user has to be setup separately as
> this information cannot be stored in the project.
>
> Even so, I think svn's property mechanism has shown itself to be a
> successful one and so I would recommend that bzr also use such a system
> but also allows the user to put the "auto props for new files"
> configuration file in the repository too. This would be a slight
> improvement over svn as it would allow per project default properties
> for new files (e.g one project may have .doc as binary because it
> represents a word doc and another as text because in that project that
> extension implies docbook).


I second that.


I can also imagine that the properties system could be used by the user
> for many different purposes and would be a useful thing to have anyway.
> So it would make sense to have the line ending conversions that should
> be applied to a file as a property of that file (as that is exactly what
> it is).


This and all other 'flags' that should be applied (se my previous posts for
examples).
For line endings i would like to see something like:
  - no conversion
  - convert to system line endings
  - convert to DOS / Unix / Mac

because there are cases where a file needs to have let's say Unix line
endings, even
when working on Windows because of some bogous tool you have to use.


But I would also like that bzr would warn about a file that was added
> and matched an auto properties entry implying line ending conversion but
> appeared to contain binary characters. In this case I think a warning is
> useful as the config file is only a general hint as to what properties
> should be set and may not be correct for all newly added files. In this
> case it should not set the line ending conversion property to avoid data
> loss.
>
> Nick
>
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