Re: Merges and Conflicts with Binary File Formats

On Feb 28, 2005, at 5:27 PM, nicholas a. evans wrote:
>
> So, I've looked and looked to see what subversion does when attempting
> to merge binary files, and I coouldn't find any confirmation at
> http://svnbook.red-bean.com/ or on google.

It doesn't merge binary files. It just creates 3 fulltexts for you to
deal with.

 From this part of the book:

   http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.1/ch03s05.html#svn-ch-3-sect-5.4

"If Subversion considers the file to be of a mergable type, it places
conflict markers—special strings of text which delimit the “sides” of
the conflict—into the file to visibly demonstrate the overlapping
areas. (Subversion uses the svn:mime-type property to decide if a
file is capable of contextual, line-based merging. See the section
called “svn:mime-type” to learn more.)"

The svn:mime-type is described here:

   http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.1/ch07s02.html#svn-ch-7-sect-2.3.2

>
> Wouldn't it be better if binary files were *never* merged and *always*
> resulted in conflicts?

Yes, that's exactly what happens.

But if a bunch of people must share binary files, then the only way to
make changes safely is to serialize access to the resource. That's
what the upcoming locking feature is all about.

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Received on Tue Mar 1 01:05:34 2005