[darcs-devel] Any answers for IsiSetup's concerns?

[John Meacham]

On Wed, Dec 12, 2007 at 09:29:06AM -0800, zooko wrote:
> I know that I personally often want darcs to stop unsetting the "x"  
> bit.  We could imagine a "permission settings" patch type and patches  
> which say "set executable" and "set not-executable".  I know you've  
> already said that this would make sense.  I had thought, until your  
> recent message, that progress on this front, as well as on the  
> symlink front, was waiting for darcs-2 patch theory to be sorted out.

How about a general patch type that can associate various 'flags' with a
file. patches would simply be "set <flag> on <file>" or "unset
<flag> on <file>".

now, flag itself can be an arbitrary string, darcs itself can interpret
some, such as 'execute' meaning to set the execute bit. but people (or
the darcs maintainers) will be free to extend the flag mechanism to
other uses with an appropriate posthook and the patch format need not be
updated.

for instance a 'worldwritable' flag could be used without updating darcs
and a posthook could do the appropriate chmod after pulling.

The only issue will be namespace collision, but a wiki page and some
conventions (like prepending local flags with 'x-') should take care of
it in practice I would think.

popular flags could eventually be canonized with a defined meaning.
(such as 'execute').

        John


-- 
John Meacham - ⑆repetae.net⑆john⑈