Re: WINCVS and MSVC problem

[Alastair J. Houghton]

address@hidden (Kaz Kylheku) writes:

> In article <address@hidden>, Stephan Feder wrote:
> >Kaz Kylheku wrote:
> >> 
> >> In article <address@hidden>, Stephan Feder wrote:
> >> >Larry,
> >> >
> >> >I know how the cvs client handles line endings but nonetheless it is a
> >> >problem for quite a few users. What about a flag for the client that
> >> >prevents it from doing _any_ line ending conversions (as I understand it
> >> >the server transfers the files as they are)?

This is an *excellent* idea.

> >> You misunderstand. The problem is that some idiots took DOS text files
> >> sitting on a Linux client, and imported or added them to CVS.
> >
> >That means everyone with a working directory shared between windows and
> >unix boxes (not shared between multiple users!) is an idiot?
> 
> A resounding yes! This is lunacy, and moreover CVS does not support it.

I have to disagree; in a Windows development environment it can be very useful
to have a UNIX box serving your home area, particularly because of the tools it
provides.  The "lunacy" is the line ending problem existing in the first place!
There's no sensible reason why all programs shouldn't be capable of using all
of the line-ending conventions...

CVS *should* have an option to disable text translation completely.  What
happens if I *want* UNIX-format text files in a project that is edited from a
Windows box?  Currently it either munges them when they're checked-out so that
I'd have to un-munge them, or I've got to mark them as binary in which case it
doesn't use deltas.

> All of the tools on a given platform should agree about what the
> representation of a text file is.

Arguably true, but wouldn't the ideal be to have all software not care whether
lines end in CR-LF, LF or just plain CR?  It's pretty easy to code things that
way, after all.

> There are exceptions; for example Cygwin can be installed so that it
> uses Unix file representations. But then, arguably, Cygwin is a platform.
> Within that platform, the tools, including CVS, agree about what a text
> file is.

I've had a few problems where Cygwin was in the wrong place in my PATH, so I
accidentally used *its* CVS rather than the Win32 one.  Now this is plainly my
fault, and I fully admit my own stupidity in doing it, but it's a bit of a pain
in the neck having to sort-out the resulting mess.

Also, Cygwin is a bit of a funny case because you can set text translation on a
per-directory basis.

Kind regards,

Alastair Houghton.