[cvsnt] New file type?

Bo Berglund bo.berglund at telia.com
Fri Mar 5 06:21:59 GMT 2004


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I have come across a case of Unix/Dos file compatibility that maybe
could be solved using a new file type setting.
The issue is this:
There are some applications that probably originate in the UNIX world
but have been ported to Windows. We use one of these.
The problem we encountered is that the one we use keeps configuration
and definition files in text format, but with LF line endings only.
The sad thing is that if we put these into CVS they check out with
CRLF line endings and become unusable by the application (which
promptly crashes).
Adding the files to CVS as binary helps, but makes them non-mergable
and thus we get to the problem of locking with all of the drawbacks.
This is even sadder when the files are actually text, only with the
wrong line endings for Windows...

My proposal here is to add a new file type that is a unix type text
file. Any file marked as such will check out with the LF line endings
and CVS will merge changes on update like it does for normal text
files. This way it will be possible to concurrently edit several
copies of these files without merging problems on update.

I guess that such a file type addition would also solve some problems
reported now and then by people using cross-system development tools.

Am I totally off or is this a viable idea?



/Bo
(Bo Berglund, developer in Sweden)



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