Re: Proposal to fix CVS binary file implementation

[David L. Martin]

From: "Paul Sander"
> I agree in principle with your statements and your proposal, but I observe
> two omissions:
>
> 1. There is a class of text file that is not mergeable, but requires
newline
> conversion.  CVS does not currently support that class of file, but I
> believe it should.  Supporting that class of file would mean adding up to
> four more keyword expansion modes, and modify CVS to apply the proper
merge
> semantics.  Examples of such files include Frame Maker MIF documents and
> uuencoded files.  It could be argued that Rich Text and HTML fall into
this
> category also.

True.  Other examples are Rational Rose .mdl files, Power Designer .pdm
files, which are ASCII files but effectively non mergeable.  CVS sort of
handles this type of file through the cvswrappers file using the -m 'COPY'
option.

>
> 2. Some people like keyword expansion, despite its effect on merges.
>

Oh, I don't want to eliminate keyword expansion completely - I only want to
eliminate it for binary files.  I too prefer to see keywords expanded with
their values ("kv") in non-binary files for general use.  If the occasional
conflict from keyword expansion during merging is acceptable (e.g. no
keyword expansion override is supplied in update or checkout), then that's
fine - I'm not recommending a change that would affect that default
behavior.

Regards,
David Martin