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

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "Adrian" == Adrian Irving-Beer <address@hidden> writes:

    Adrian> I don't think it's unfeasable that in a couple of years,
    Adrian> tla (or whatever the de facto arch client is) will be much
    Adrian> more cross- platform.

Neither tla nor the platform is the problem; it's the rest of the
toolchain.  Toolchains are almost by definition platform-specific and
also task-specific, and have their own quirks.

arch should provide binary semantics for objects it manages,
attributes for each object, and a way to plug in an attribute-
dependent codec on the client.  Toolchains/platforms/projects should
provide their own codecs, which the arch project could accept as
"contrib" and maintain a library, but should not "support" as part of
arch.

Support for the codec library as a related project is up to the arch
maintainers, and would be desirable.  I'm just saying that a project
using arch should decide what the archival file format should be, and
arch should serve those files up byte-for-byte identical to the
archive content, until it gets to the codec.  After that it's up to
project policy, and mistakes in codec usage aren't arch bugs _by
definition_.  Separation of responsibility and all that.

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