EOL extension

[Martin Geisler]

Mark Hammond <mhammond at skippinet.com.au> writes:

> On 30/11/2009 7:41 PM, Martin Geisler wrote:
>> The old extension had a safety check in place so that it would not
>> convert a file containing a NUL byte. We should add that to the new
>> extension too. If Subversion's logic is equally simple, then you can
>> get the Subversion behavior by putting
>>
>> [patterns]
>> ** = native
>>
>> into .hgeol in the repository root. Here '**' is the glob pattern
>> that will expand through directory separators, i.e., it will match
>> all files.
>
> I seem to recall some objections to guessing based on the file
> content. Maybe there needs to be different spelling for "this is
> exactly what I want - please don't look at the content" vs "please use
> my preference if the file contents indicate it is suitable"?

I'm not sure it's necessary -- do you have any text files with NUL bytes
in them? That's what we're talking about: excluding binary files (where
we define a file to be "binary" iff it contains a NUL byte).

>> I originally expected people to add the necessary patterns to .hgeol
>> as they are discovered. Remember that this is *easier here than* with
>> Subversion: the patterns are stored inside the repository instead of
>> in ~/.subversion/config and so only one developer needs to update the
>> pattern list when a new type of file is added.
>
> Being "easier than subversion" is an excellent goal, but we shouldn't
> let a good assertion get in the way of actual experience ;) In this
> particular case, that one developer who knows the pattern list needs
> to be updated may not be the same developer who adds the new file.

Is that a big problem? I don't think it is if we make it easy to correct
mistakes.

I think we should aim for a simple mechanism that get's it right 99% of
the time. Simplicity is important here in order to make it easy to
correct mistakes.

So if you see a file called foo.xyz with Unix EOL style on your Windows
platform, then you should only have to add "**.xyz = native" to the
.hgeol file and run "hg eolupdate" to fix this.

> Subversion lets you make one (global) configuration change, and from
> then on it does the right thing without further action being
> necessary, regardless of the pattern of new files.

You will also be able to specify a global pattern in your ~/.hgrc file
(or the equivalent for Windows). That will then apply to all
repositories.

> IOW, my experience with subversion is "set preferences once, globally,
> and it works as expected from then on." Aiming for easier than that is
> certainly ambitious, but personally, I would be happy with nothing
> more than that.

Yeah, we're definitely some way from being able to make a full "easier
than Subversion" claim :-) The claim only referred to the point about
being able to specify patterns in the repository itself instead of
having to do it in a per-user file.

-- 
Martin Geisler

VIFF (Virtual Ideal Functionality Framework) brings easy and efficient
SMPC (Secure Multiparty Computation) to Python. See: http://viff.dk/.