Re: svn diff output

Ben Collins-Sussman <sussman@collab.net>:
> We also already have a patch-like representation of these tree deltas:
> it's our dump format. The dump format is meant to be portable, and has
> an RFC-822 "look and feel". Take a look at it. It may be 90% of what
> we need for defining this new patch format.

That is an excellent, *excellent* point. It actually passed through my
head when I was meditating on action diffs a few months back, but I
managed to forget it until you raised it again.

> It's documented here:
>
> http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/notes/fs_dumprestore.txt
>
> The original versions 1 and 2 of this format always included full-texts
> of files. But ghudson introduced format version 3 in svn 1.1, which
> allows binary diffs instead of full-texts. That's a huge win.
>
> Is this a good starting point? Doesn't it seem like we're mostly there?

Yes, indeed it does. We should think of a dump file is just an action diff
from the empty tree. That unifies the concept of a dump with an action diff.

The unification was about as far as I got in my previous thinking.

-- 
		Eric S. Raymond
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