[darcs-devel] [darcs #120] darcs record needs --no-auto-binary

[Mark Stosberg via RT]

Mon Dec 06 22:22:04 2004: New ticket: 120.
Transaction: Ticket created by markjugg
       Queue: Darcs
     Subject: darcs record needs --no-auto-binary
       Owner: Nobody
  Requestors: mark at summersault.com
      Status: new
 Ticket <URL: http://bugs.darcs.net/.//Ticket/Display.html?id=120 >

I consider it a bug in darcs that I can't override darcs notion of what
should be a binary. When darcs considers a file binary, some useful
functions like 'darcs diff' quit working as I expect, the whole thing
because less efficient because full files are stored instead of patches. 
And currently, there is no way to turn this auto-detection off. 

I propose two new flags for 'record':

--no-auto-binary  Turn off darc's auto binary file detection
--auto-binary     Let darcs automatically detect binary files [DEFAULT]

Neither of these should affect the behavior of how the 'binaries' prefs
files are used, since adjustments can be to those files to affect their
behavior. 

As a seperate issue (outside the scope of this ticket), darcs binary
detection should improved, along the lines of the 'file' tool, or the
Perl interface 'File::MMagic', as discussed here:
http://www.abridgegame.org/pipermail/darcs-users/2004-November/004204.html

However, a better auto-detection system is not a complete solution.
There will always be mistakes, and it's important to put control in the
hands of users to decide what is correct here. 

(I am currently experiencing this issue an an active project that I
haven't figured out how to work around yet. Perhaps there are some lines
I can remove and re-compile to remove the auto-detection...)

  Mark