Re: [Monotone-devel] [Monotone-users] CAD versioning

[Thomas Moschny]

Hi Hugo,

> Really??  It would be a surprise to me that monotone's delta algorithm
> would only be efficient for text files, because I have been using
> monotone for many years on images and pdf files without problem
> regarding performance.
> 
> I thought monotone uses xdelta, which is a binary delta algorithm that
> facilitates binary merges that can be easily applied to both text and
> non-text files.
> 
> Am I right, or is monotone's delta algorithm only efficient for text
> files?

These are two different things. The fact that Monotone uses xdelta to
efficiently store different versions of a file is an implementation
detail, that is not (should not) be visible to the user (well, besides
the fact that it saves disk storage).

An automatic merging attempt on the other hand happens whenever there's
a conflict for text files to be solved, and this merging attempt is
line-based.

Do not confuse them, they have nothing to do with each other.

That said, if I remember correctly, one could hook in any other method
for trying an automatic merge in case of a conflict on file contents,
and that method could in theory also handle binary files (like zipped
xml and the like).

Regards,
Thomas