[darcs-users] Line endings opinion poll (with bonus opinion)

[Michael Conrad]

On Saturday, October 30, 2004 8:30 PM, Will wrote:
> Martin Schaffner <schaffner at gmx.li> writes:
> >>> 1: All spacing and formatting and control characters are part of
> >>> the file, and should not be modified by a revision control
> >>> program.  If it were modified, it could end up with inconsistent
> >>> results when copying between systems and diffing by hand.
> >>
> >> definitely. I give darcs my data and I expect it to just take it and
> >> store it.
> >
> > I second that. Please keep darcs simple! There are other tools for
> > line conversion. Sometimes, I push to a Windows filesystem mounted on
> > my Mac - should darcs convert in this case or not? What if I want to
> > try out other changes on the Windows mount before pulling them?
> > I don't really care if there's a --convert-newlines option, as long as
> > per default, darcs does not mangle my files.
> > People who want this option always switched on can then throw it into
> > _darcs/prefs/defaults.
>
> I have yet to run into a case where I want newlines converted from
> what they were at check-in, and if there ever is such a case I'll use
> emacs or unix2dos.

The issue wasn't about getting the checked-out line endings the way I want
them, but about fixing OTHER's line endings BEFORE checkin.  My story of Hal
& Ned was a simplified version of a school project I did where I had 2 team
members who were exclusively Windows users, and had never used version
control.  I managed to convince them that version control was necessary, and
got them to install WinCVS.  Of course, not too long down the road I realize
that all their checkins have ^M all over the place.  I stripped these out,
but then it created a lot of extra "patch info".

The heart of the issue is that they added "logical lines" to the project,
but CVS added line encodings.  If darcs works with "logical lines"
internally, then everyone can have them written locally using the encoding
of their choice.

-Mike