Re: make cvs text agnostic?

[Frederic Brehm]

At 09:58 PM 8/28/2002, Matthew Herrmann wrote:
> re this conversation of file types -- why autodetect them, isn't that the
> whole point
> of a file type, given in every file's extension? heuristic detection of
> binariness -- yuck!

Exactly!



> a mechanism already exists to tell with this problem -- why don't people
> just make a whopper of a cvswrappers file and then be done with it?

I assume that you are talking about filename extensions on a Microsoft 
operating system. That mechanism isn't very reliable. Quick, what kind of 
file is a ".dat"?

You may have local shop procedures that define the type of all files you 
deal with and give them unique filename extensions that are enforced in 
some way by your culture. That's fine. You can now make a whopping 
cvswrappers file and be done with it.

Try taking your cvswrappers file to a different shop, especially one that 
uses a variant of Unix, and see what happens.

I'll avoid the rant about overloading filenames with semantic information 
about the contents of the file. That discussion doesn't belong here.

CVS is nice because it doesn't try to enforce that particular way of using 
filenames on shops that do  not or cannot use it. It does, however, provide 
a mechanism (cvswrappers) to allow you to do it in your shop, though.

Fred

_______________________________________________________________
Frederic W. Brehm, Sarnoff Corporation, http://www.sarnoff.com/