Re: A simple (?) suggestion from a svn fan :)

Alessandro Polverini <polverini@nibbles.it> writes:

> So, I'm wondering: would it be possible to implement this behaviour in
> svn, when checking in files that have a certain property set:
> - gunzip the file
> - diff it with the previous (gunzipped) file
> - store differences (diff works well enough with xml files)

Internally, Subversion uses a binary diff algorithm to express all
file differences, regardless of whether a file contains text or binary
data. So when you store successive versions of a binary file in a
Subversion repository, you *are* getting differential (compressed)
storage. (CVS, because it uses RCS, has to store the entire binary
file over and over.)

So in this sense, Subversion is already doing what you wish.

> That would work even better if it would be possible to use an "xml-diff"
> instead of normal diff because of several factors like:
> - possibility to correctly make diffs also if xml is not pretty printed
> (e.g. all in one line)
> - possibility to better understand differences (e.g.: a node/property
> added/removed/modified) for better difference reporting

Someday, we plan to have a pluggable client-side diff interface. In
other words, you would register an external program to launch and
display "XML diffs" whenever a file with svn:mime-type property of
"xml/*" needs to be merged in the working copy.

We just haven't had time to implement it yet. :-)

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Received on Mon Feb 24 18:55:56 2003