Extended Attributes in MacOS X?

I have an ECAD package which writes its project filename (think of a Makefile) without a Unixish dot extension. When this file is checked out from SVN its tagged as a text file of some sort and can not be opened by dragging it to the application, from within the application, or right click Open With... or nothing. Its terribly important because this project file is the front door for working on other files in the project.

What I've done is add a fixit.sh to the folder (where the project file is "Test"):

#!/bin/sh
xattr -wx com.apple.FinderInfo "50 52 4A 34 4D 43 53 58 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00" Test

The above sets the traditional Mac CREATOR and TYPE attributes to PRJ4 and MCSX.

Schematic files have dot extensions to their names and Finder figures out on its own how to repair their extended attributes.

Searching archives and the internet I know there has been a lot of discussion about supporting extended attributes but I can't find where anything has been done about it.

What I've done is create a caveman-simple client side hook, one that has to be manually executed. Would be nice to be able to automate this without having alias or redirect /usr/bin/svn through a shell second guessing what svn is being asked to do.

Would be nice to be able to add an SVN property, perhaps darwin:com.apple.FinderInfo that reads the current value from the file on commit and sets that as the SVN property value, and on update/checkout writes the value to the working file.

How do others handle this issue?

--
David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly_at_HiWAAY.net
============================================================
Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.