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Re: Support for maintain full version control of OpenOffice.org files (and other compressed files)

From: James Chaldecott <james_at_swythan.co.uk>
Date: 2004-09-02 19:11:47 CEST

David Marín Carreño wrote:
> It would be great if Subversion could maintain a full version control on
> compressed files, as zipped files or gzipped files.
>
> This way, we could use subversion for working on OpenOffice.org
> documents (they are just zipped XML files, plus possible binary images
> or other documents) just as if they were LaTeX or Docbook documents.
>

This does sound handy...

Mark wrote:
> My vote goes for svn not messing with my zip files. If your office suite of
> choice stores files in proprietary binary formats, it's not up to svn to
> interpret/convert them before storing them. Should it also convert Word docs
> to text before saving them? The fact that zip is a well-known proprietary
> binary format doesn't make it less proprietary or less binary.
>
> I'll go back to sleep now.
>
> Mark

...but I agree with Mark on this, though. It seems like it would be a
long and slippery slope to start supporting individual "special" binary
formats in SVN.

Aha!

 From http://subversion.tigris.org :
> Features planned for after 1.0
> ...
> # Support for plug-in client side diff programs
>
> Subversion knows how to show diffs for text files, and can also use an
> external diff program to do so. Later, the user will have the option to
> plug in external diff programs for any kind of file.

This sounds like an excellent use case for this planned feature. Just
configure a suitable client-side diff/merge program for .zip files. For
example, I believe "Beyond Compare" (windows only) can diff zip files as
if they were directories.

I can see a lot of ppl having a use for this feature once it is
finished. Zip files, images & Win32 TLB files could all be meaningfully
diffed (if not necessarily merged).

I might even get around to writing a utility to relieve myself of the
evil Visual Basic frx/ctx file nightmares I have (if you don't know of
what I speak, just count yourself lucky :-) ).

Cheers,

James

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Received on Thu Sep 2 19:40:59 2004

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