Getting started with a content filter

[Anteru]

Hi,

so just before this discussion gets completely out-of-scope :)

Is there some wiki/discussion page/blueprint where we can take down
notes so the use cases can be gathered somewhere? It seems to me that
use-cases and solutions get mixed up a bit, which is not a good thing.

I totally agree with Martin that large files should just work as small
files. Ideally, you just set some per-branch value of how much space I'm
willing to allocate to old revisions of binary files. That doesn't sound
too hard in theory, once the actual work-flow is written down.

As I don't have the expertise to improve bzr to the point where all data
is passed around as streams, I'll focus on the proof-of-concept plugin
which just adds some support for storing large files. I'm away for the
next three weeks though, so progress might be a bit slow.

Re locks: Locking files can be done already with a plugin, can't it? You
just have to perform a commit to add some metadata on check-out and
another one on check-in, and your editor must pick up the metadata. I
can't see how file locking can be built in into a DVCS unless you run a
lightweight checkout, and honestly, isn't that enough for artists
anyway? Do artists really need old revisions from the repository? My
feeling is that artists are fine with tons of local copies that they
somehow manage on their own, so having a lightweight checkout for them
shouldn't be much of a problem. For developers, you want real branches
of course, but that's fine as developers shouldn't collide on binary
content anyway.

Cheers,
  Anteru