binary files in MQ

[Peter Arrenbrecht]

On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 5:13 PM, Bill Barry <after.fallout at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was thinking about a way to do binary files in MQ and came up with the
> following:
> 1 file with a predefined extension, I'll call it .controller
> .controller file syntax:
> (first line is the name of the patch file)
> - sha_hex_string /path/to/file/in/repository
> + sha_hex_string /path/to/file/in/repository
>
> The sha hex string is a hash of the binary file being managed, in the
> patches directory there is a binaries subdir containing files with sha
> filenames. When pushing, this file would get copied to the specified
> path (if it was a +, if it was a - it would be moved from the repo to
> the binaries dir, thought might need to be given to this a bit more).
>
> The series file would still work the same, except that if a line ended
> in .controller it would be assumed to be a binary containing patch and
> it would use the controller file syntax.
>
> qimport would import patches just like it does now, but could be
> supplied with a zip (zip, tar.gz, bz2, email with attachments ...) file
> as well, in which it would look for a controller file to put on the
> series, or straight up a controller file where the related files are
> located in the same directory or a binaries directory also exists.
>
> I wouldn't have any time to actually work on this for the foreseeable
> future, but I wondered if it was a worthwhile venture. Does it make
> sense? Are there any major roadblocks to this?

What's the reason you don't simply use git-style diffs with mq? Size?
-parren