[darcs-users] Binary patches

[Sean E. Russell]

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On Friday 05 December 2003 08:35, David Roundy wrote:
> Well, unless you have no (or few) binary files.  In general, I don't see
> much use for putting binary files in a repository, so doing it with less
> disk usage doesn't strike me as very important (or interesting).

Some projects depend on libraries.  An even greater number include images -- 
diagrams, images for buttons, logos, etc.   One of my projects at work has 
1MB of sources, 4MB of libraries (Java jars), and 1.3MB of images.

Considering that darcs doesn't allow "sub projects", having robust support for 
binaries is doubly important for support of dependancies.  Even given 
sub-project support, this won't address the issue of non-compilable binaries, 
such as images and audio files.  Darcs will be almost entirely useless for 
game projects, which will mostly (size-wise) consist of binaries that *will* 
change often.

Corporate projects -- where the "go out and fetch all of these dependancies 
and build them yourself" mentality is not acceptable -- aren't a major target 
group for darcs, but I still think it's useful, if for no other reason than 
this:  knowing that binary files are stored multiple times for each version 
will makes binaries in darcs painful.  Changing a single couple megabyte file 
can cause dramatic proportional increases in the repository size, and an even 
small project can become quickly unweildy.

The reason why I'm harping on this now is because this is an architectural 
issue -- it is something that, if in the future you decide to change, will 
cause backward compatability issues in the repository.  IE, it is easier to 
change it earlier than later.

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