Re: Autoexpanding ZIP archives?

Phillip Susi wrote:
> 2) The client configuration file would list acceptable filters, possibly
> on a per repository basis, and map them to the local executable that
> performs the filtering

And how are you establishing what "type" of file you are talking about,
since filenames are fungible. I could be perverse and force my
OpenOffice files to have the extension .ZIP (or .OOOZIP), I can do that,
but the built in handling you propose couldn't know that (yes, I know
that I have to go through special effort to then read in that file again).

If we were all using Amiga's and had the AIFF file format (IFF was
invented by Electronic Arts, FWIW), we could just call the system
library that checked for the AIFF header and determine what application
this binary belongs to (everything that didn't have a header was
automatically text). We don't have that luxury, and file signature
mapping is a black art at best (since we have already noted that
OpenOffice files are really zipfiles).

> 3) svn add already does some kind of checking to decide if the file
> is binary or text. This could be extended to recognize the mime type
> of the file in more detail, and based on settings in the client
> configuration file, automatically set the filter property based on
> the mime type.

And this has already been noted as being a less than complete solution
already. All in all, it seems like a very fragile feature that can be
handled more easily by a wrapper script on a site by site basis.

John

-- 
John Peacock
Director of Information Research and Technology
Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group
4501 Forbes Boulevard
Suite H
Lanham, MD  20706
301-459-3366 x.5010
fax 301-429-5748
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@subversion.tigris.org
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@subversion.tigris.org