[BUG] DVS cross-platform file error

Colin Putney cputney at whistler.com
Sat May 3 05:26:57 UTC 2003


On Friday, May 2, 2003, at 10:08  PM, Julian Fitzell wrote:

> Colin Putney wrote:
>> On Friday, May 2, 2003, at 03:57  PM, Tim Rowledge wrote:
>>>> Traditionally Smalltalk has used CR linends, so DVS probably ought 
>>>> to use that; however it really shouldn't matter so long as it is 
>>>> properly consistent.
>> The reason DVS messes with line endings is that it's meant to be used 
>> with CVS, which doesn't diff and merge properly with non-LF line 
>> endings.
>
> I don't think this is actually quite true, is it?  I was always led to 
> believe that if you check in a text file with the correct line-endings 
> used on your system the cvs client will convert it to LF before 
> storing it in the repository.  When somebody checks it out, they will 
> get it in *their* native line endings.  The problem is that if you 
> check in a file in the wrong line endings for your system, they don't 
> get converted.

Well, yes, different clients handle this in different ways. MacCVS Pro 
had an option for converting line endings automatically. Of course, the 
concept of "native" line endings is a big fuzzy these days, what with 
MacOS X and Cygwin using LF endings, and decent text editors being able 
to handle all three conventions.

Still though, the unix-native cvs command-line client, which is what 
the vast majority of CVS users use, wants LF endings. It would be silly 
not to produce them.

> This is problematic if you copy the file to another system or work (as 
> I do at home) on one system while committing from another (I work on a 
> mounted filesystem - it's easier to work on a samba share than get cvs 
> working with ssh on windows).

Yeah, that's ugly.

> Of course the solution of always filing out CR/LF doesn't quite work 
> either because if a windows user does the checkin it should get 
> converted, but other users won't convert it.  Basically, this is jsut 
> another argument for getting Monticello to a fully working version 
> control system that doesn't depend on CVS.

Can't the Windows CVS client be configured not to convert? But yes, we 
need something better.

Colin



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