Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: File-tpye plug-in architecture for Arch?

[Andrew Suffield]

On Mon, Dec 22, 2003 at 02:04:28PM +0100, Thomas Zander wrote:
> On Sunday 21 December 2003 17:57, Tom Lord wrote:
> >     > From: michael josenhans <address@hidden>
> >     > In XML the following terms are devared as equivalent:
> >     >
> >     > a) <nodename attiribute='5656'></nodename>
> >     > b) <nodename attiribute='5656'/>
> >     >
> >     > Spaces outside the nodes are irrelevant. Thus according to
> >     > standard after reading and saving a XML-file, the XML-file might
> >     > look different, even if its content has not changed.
> >
> > Yikes.
> >
> > On the one hand, sure, you could abstract the `cmp' and conceptually
> > the world doesn't fall apart.
> >
> > But on the other hand, that would mean (for example) that `get' would
> > sometimes return a tree whose source files are not byte-wise
> > equivalent to those that were passed to `commit'.   It's a pretty
> > big leap of faith to think that that's desirable.
> 
> If a file is an honest XML file I fail to see why this would be a problem;
> remember that the whole idea of using an xmlDiff on the file was to avoid
> merge conflicts since
>    <bla name1="val" name2=val" />
> and
>    <bla name2="val" name1=val" />
> give a change in diff(1) but are really equivalent (as just another example)

No, that was not the idea at all.

The idea was to avoid conflicts in this case:

Original:
<foo name1="val1" />

Modified1:
<foo name1="val1" />
<foo name2="val2" />

Modified2:
<foo name1="val1" />
<foo name3="val3" />

When taking the diff from Original to Modified1, and applying it to Modified2.

A generic XML diff tool fails *utterly* to comprehend what to do in
this case. It must throw a conflict and fail.

> It all revolves around what you conceptual level the diff works on.

Yes, it does. XML's the wrong one; always remember that "XML" and
"binary data" are synonymous for all purposes.

-- 
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