Re: setting a convention for property values

On Wed, Dec 04, 2002 at 01:56:25PM -0600, Nicholas Riley wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 04, 2002 at 12:54:12PM -0600, Karl Fogel wrote:
> > Nicholas Riley <njriley@uiuc.edu> writes:
> > > I have no objection to what you want to do with text properties, but I
> > > already have lots of binary properties in my repos (using a svn
> > > wrapper script for Mac resource forks). If you declare that binary
> > > properties are the way forward, I need some way to fix my existing
> > > properties ;-) - preferably as automatic as possible, for example svn
> > > detecting binary properties the way it detects binary files and
> > > auto-encoding/decoding them would be nice.
> >
> > Um, how have your binary properties been behaving over ra_dav? :-)
> > It should be corrupting them... see
> >
> > http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=1015
>
> I've only been using them over ra_local. Whatever svn needs to do to
> base64-encode and -decode properties over DAV sounds reasonable, but
> I'd prefer it not be exposed to the client. That's the cool thing
> about svn's file handling, it's transparent and most of the time the
> user doesn't have to care. Properties should be similar, and binary
> metadata really will be needed eventually even if I'm the only person
> using it now. Eventually I plan to add native svn support for the
> stuff I'm using wrapper scripts for at the moment (unless someone else
> beats me to it), but it won't happen until after 1.0 at this rate.
>
The problem with this is that we need to know for absolutely certain the our
binary detection algorithm will always be right for this to work. Otherwise
we need props on props to say whether they are binary. Props need to either
be all binary, or not binary at all.

(With the possible exception that svn: props could be text and the rest
binary).

My personal option is that svn: props should be utf-8, lf line endings. All
other props should be binary, and base64 encoded if that is what dav requires.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kevin Pilch-Bisson                    http://www.pilch-bisson.net
     "Historically speaking, the presences of wheels in Unix
     has never precluded their reinvention." - Larry Wall
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