Wilfredo Sanchez <wsanchez@mit.edu> writes:
> I'd like to point that one solution is to make Excel files
> mergeable. That is, let's not forget to make sure SVN has the
> appropriate flexibility to use alternative diff/merge tools for
> oddball file formats.
>
> Obviously, if two people edit different cells in the spreadsheet,
> it can be merged in much the same way that two C files with
> different line edits can be merged. Maybe easier, in fact.
Absolutely! Providing support for alternate merging tools was
something that we talked about a lot when Subversion was just getting
started, but I think we decided to put it off.
The point is: in the abstract, there is no such thing as a mergeable
or unmergeable file format. There is only a presence or lack of tools
that merge in a way whose semantics you like. I'll bet before people
discovered that patching generally works pretty well, they considered
source files unmergeable.
I'll admit, though, that if you don't have a merging tool, and you
can't even get reliable documentation on the file format, then the
file is de facto unmergeable.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@subversion.tigris.org
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@subversion.tigris.org
Received on Wed Aug 7 22:36:13 2002