Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: line endings as project policy

[Justin Patrin]

On 11/27/06, address@hidden <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 27, 2006 at 11:52:53AM +0000, Bruce Stephens wrote:
> > Richard Levitte - VMS Whacker <address@hidden> writes:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > > That leads me back to thinking that we still need to mark files that
> > > are getting changed, and that something automatic should happen to
> > > them, so a file will look the same checked out as before it got
> > > checked in.
> >
> > I'm sure we discussed all of this the last time around (and probably
> > the time before that; possibly I'm thinking of discussions in OpenCM
> > or GNU Arch).
> >
> > Storing things as binary seems easy, but that's likely to cause
> > irritation for projects that use Windows and Unix.
> >
> > More aggressively converting files that look texty also seems not too
> > hard, but it may break files that have inconsistent line-endings, and
> > files that are text but require a specific line ending convention.
> >
> > On the whole I think the second is a better option.  Basically do what
> > subversion seems to do: guess when files are text, and mark them as
> > such; have an option that lets people specify the line-ending
> > conventions of a file, but by default assume the native convention.
>
> I remain against doing any conversion based on a guess.

As a heavy user of version control systems (CVS, SVN, and MTN mostly)
I'm also against any automatic conversion of text line endings. While
I understand that "some editors" and "some programs" don't like
certain line endings, in the general case it's easier to just leave
things as they are. Most programs and editors are fine with any type
of line ending and will work correctly on them. If there is a problem
then the user or repository manager can set a setting that will
convert the files. The default should always be "leave it alone, let
the user/repo admin/person checking in decide whether to convert".

> -- hendrik
>
> >
> > If you want to be paranoid, I guess for files claimed to be text,
> > monotone could check, and only allow that if the line-endings really
> > are consistent.  (That should prevent trashing files: the worst is
> > that you'd have to say what the line-ending convention really is.)
> >
> > [...]
> >


--
Justin Patrin