[darcs-devel] Problem with Mac line breaks?

[David Roundy]

On Mon, Apr 11, 2005 at 08:55:45PM -0400, Shinan Kassam wrote:
> Mac OSX 10.3.8
> GHC 6.4 (compiled from darwinports)
> Darcs 1.0.2 (compiled from official darcs repository 04-09-2005)
> 
> I think I found a problem with darcs. Can anyone confirm or refute?
> Also, nothing similar is mentioned in bug tracking. I sent this to the
> users mailing last week, but I think it slipped beneath the radar.
> Whats the accepted method to report a problem?

Asking on -users is good.  Sending a bug report to bugs at darcs.net is also
good, and is a bit more likely to get a developer response, but also wastes
a bit more developer time if it's a duplicate (while duplicate bug reports
on darcs-users are often answered by other users).

> When using files with Mac line breaks, darcs seems unable to recognize
> the seperate lines. So....when I change one line it thinks the
> contents of the file are one line and records the entire file as
> changed. This kinda makes the whole idea of patches useless. My
> workaround is to use Unix line breaks (this is a time workaround for
> my purposes, just thought I'd get the issue out there).

Indeed, that is correct.  I've been under the impression that Apple was
moving away from the old Mac line breaks towards using unix-style line
breaks, so supporting '\r' line breaks hasn't been a priority.

There are some windows folks who would like to support having a different
set of line ending in the working directory from darcs' internal format.  I
think there was even a patch by Peter Strand to support this, but it was
(as described by the author) a bit of a hack, and noone has yet volunteered
to clean it up or do it right.
-- 
David Roundy
http://www.darcs.net