[darcs-users] darcs repository corruption ("unapplicable" removeFile patch)

[Max Battcher]

On 4/30/2009 2:38, Steven G. Johnson wrote:
> PPS. It's a little confusing that the files in _darcs/inventories all
> end with ".gz" but are apparently plain-text files.

Darcs 1 would always append .gz, but only gzip the file when it was 
larger than some simple threshhold (and/or when certain flags of ``darcs 
optimize`` were called). I believe this was originally done as a 
(potential) performance optimization. From what I've seen, darcs 2 
always gzips the files. I think that in the end, the performance loss of 
gzipping small files was a relatively minor trade-off for the conceptual 
simplicity of "everything is gzipped".

--
--Max Battcher--
http://worldmaker.net