Re: Smoke, FUD (was Re: CVS corrupts binary files ...)

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Monday, June 28, 2004 at 19:02:19 (-0700), Paul Sander wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: Smoke, FUD (was Re: CVS corrupts binary files ...)
>
> I have never, ever advocated changing the format of an RCS file in a
> way that would break the ci, co, rcs, or rlog programs.  And although
> I strongly advocate the replacement of user-exposed diff and merge
> tools, I have never, ever advocated the replacement of the diff tool
> that computes the deltas stored in an RCS file.

Indeed -- instead you would rather use different algorithms for storing
deltas and for using them.

That would be just plain stupid, if indeed not eventually dangerous to
the integrity of a repository.

The tools we now have for calculating and handling deltas are all
designed to work _together_, not in isolation of each other, and that
uniformity is as valuable to CVS as it is to RCS alone, if not more so.

How about you go off and spend the next, say, two years or so
intensively using such a scheme as you propose on a massively huge
variety of projects.  That should give you about 10% of the experience
the rest of the world has with using diff and diff3 and rcsmerge
uniformly for both purposes.

Then if you still think it's wise to use disparate techniques for
storing deltas and for using deltas then you can show your results and
raise your proposal here again.

In the mean time please keep in mind that there are not just a plethora
of tools for using diff-style deltas, but there's also an enormous
amount of human experience with them too.

You (and a few others) seem to want to throw the baby out with the bath
water, and all just so that a few hair-brained and lame mis-uses of CVS
will work "better".  In the mean time if you (and others) had learned to
use the best tool for the job in the first place then you'd never have
had to dream up such a half-baked idea.

-- 
                                                Greg A. Woods

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