[darcs-users] problem with files without trailing newlines

[Kevin Smith]

David Roundy wrote:
> The problem has been that changing how darcs breaks files into newlines
> breaks compatibility, so I didn't want to do it.  I've now decided that now
> is the time to break compatibility, and I also realized that it won't be as
> bad as I feared.

Dang. Since I only started using darcs after it started writing out new 
patch filenames, I hoped I would avoid any conversions. Oh well.

But I wonder if it's really necessary to break compatibility. Would it 
be "good enough" that checking out an old repo with a new version would 
omit the trailing newline?

Or perhaps the repo conversion could be considered optional, where if 
the user can live without those trailing newlines, and they already have 
the new patch names, they don't really *have* to convert?

Or maybe I just need to get over my fear of conversions :-)

> I've tried to think of a nicer backwards-compatible way of fixing things,
> but wasn't able to come up with anything that wasn't hideously ugly.  Once
> this process is over, darcs will deal with the issue of files lacking
> trailing newlines very nicely--the trailing newline is represented by an
> empty line at the end of the file.

This is a good change. And I agree that now is the time to make it.

Kevin