Large Binary Files

[jbowtie at amathaine.com]

On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 6:05 PM, Chris Hecker <checker at d6.com> wrote:
>
>> But is locking even necessary in this day and age when we can allow
>> merging in most major SCMs?
>
> You can't merge most binary files, at least the ones used in game
> development.  How do you merge an mp3?
>
> Chris
>

Well I'm working pretty specifically on this very problem right now.
With regard to audio, you can't really merge the raw sources but you
can (in theory) merge your sequencer files. Most audio/video editors
these days are nonlinear and nondestructive so the raw files change
with far less frequency.

If engineer 1 changes the violin track and engineer 2 changes the
vocals track, you can merge that without conflicts. Even in the case
of a conflict you include both versions of the track and flag them as
conflicting so a human can render judgement. Eventually that gets
rendered down to an MP3 or OGG, but in my worldview that's a build
artifact rather than a primary source.

Of course this nirvana requires Bazaar to be extensible so that
diff/merge algorithms can be plugged for filetype-specific behaviour,
which is where I'm focusing right now. Currently my hitlist is .zip,
.odf, .xcf/.psd, and .svg. After that look at .blend and audio/video
sequencing.