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

[Jan Hudec]

On Fri, Oct 08, 2004 at 01:26:22 -0400, Adrian Irving-Beer wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 08, 2004 at 10:03:16AM +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> This is the sort of thing I meant -- basically, *if* it was going
> to be linked into arch at all, it should be at a very extensible
> API distance, and deal with all sorts of things above and beyond
> just CRLFs.
> 
> This is also (potentially) what I meant when I said that the future
> tla might be more cross-platform -- simply that the core would
> 'understand' the need for customisable meta/data-munging, and allow
> plug-ins the flexibility they need to do it.
> 
> Of course, the quick and dirty way is to just hack together one- or
> two-purpose non-comprehensive minitools that work outside arch
> altogether.  Hence my statement that it needed a separate program, a
> lot of thought, or (preferably) both. :)

When Tom finishes xl0, the interface should get rather simple. But it
will still take a LOT care to do the data-munging right.

The problem here is how to do diff and how to do patch. Basicaly they
must both be done on the archive format of the file. So if the working
file is in different format, it has to be converted to archive format
and back. So it's kind of lot of work.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                 Jan 'Bulb' Hudec 
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