Re: [Gnu-arch-users] missing feature: text file handling

[Adrian Irving-Beer]

On Thu, Oct 07, 2004 at 09:24:58AM +0200, address@hidden wrote:

> Files should be classified as text, or binary files.

They already are, based on what diff(1) thinks.

I think you'd find a lot of resistance to manual classification, at
least as a default.

> text files in working directories should be in native format
[. . .]
> maybe tla should even go as far as to store text files as UTF8 in
> the archives, and translating back if required?

This kind of translation (CR/CRLF, UTF8/whatever) begins to break down
the basic behaviour of tla, because what goes in may not be what comes
out any more.  CRLF->CR in particular is always a lossy operation, and
in some fairly rare cases, so is Unicode conversion.

Cross-platform issues step further outside the boundaries of just
what's inside the files; for example, does your platform (or your
configuration) need ACLs, or Unix octal permissions?  What about file
names?  The same OS that requires CRLF also expects you to avoid
certain not-so-special characters in filenames.

As far as I can tell, tla is basically a POSIX tool.  For that, it
works nicely.

I don't think it's unfeasable that in a couple of years, tla (or
whatever the de facto arch client is) will be much more cross-
platform. But until then, that sort of stuff needs either a) an
external tool, b) a lot of careful thought, or c) both.  I don't think
a simple 'do what CVS does' (w.r.t. CRLF) is going to do the job.

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