Re: Create/Apply Patch - UTF-16 and binary support

Stefan Sperling wrote:

> On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 12:29:16PM -0400, Friedrich.Brunzema wrote:
>> I’m kind of surprised/disappointed that a reliable patch mechanism does not
>> seem to exist for svn.
>
> Well, before Subversion 1.7, there was no support for applying patches at all!

There was in TortoiseSVN.

> I think the basic problem you're asking about is that Subversion
> does not support UTF-16 as a text format. This problem isn't specific
> to the 'svn patch' command. Solving this problem probably isn't
> trivial.
> See http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2194

That is one of the two problems that Friedrich listed.  The other is that Svn does not support patching of 'binary' files.  (More generally, Subversion cannot round-trip an arbitrary change from 'svn diff' to 'svn patch' and back.  As well as no support for 'binary' files, it has only partial support for tree changes.)

There is some overlap between those two issues, but neither of them strictly depends on the other.

Friedrich, I also wish we could support these two requirements.  As an open source project, development happens mainly when somebody steps up and does it.  Are you, or is anybody you know, able to help specify or design or implement these features?  Even starting to discuss how it could work can sometimes be enough to get other people involved.  I personally would be willing to help with supporting a more complete diff and patch, since I am currently working in the area of diff and merge and renames.

- Julian
Received on 2013-05-22 21:18:20 CEST