[darcs-users] Re: feature request: set +x flag for me

[Andrew Pimlott]

On Thu, Sep 30, 2004 at 02:55:10AM -0400, Eric S. Johansson wrote:
> Sean Perry wrote:
> >I have been trying to learn the code well enough to get a mechanism for 
> >this into darcs. Others have been talking about their own methods. This 
> >will happen because it is just too annoying otherwise.

absolutely agreed

> >My current thought is to have a meta repository in the repository that 
> >has programs run by hand or by darcs. So I could have a 'perms' file 
> >which lists each file and directory and the permission it should have.
> 
> I requested the same feature a few months ago and folks that knew better 
> than I convinced me of the wisdom of not embedding this kind of 
> functionality in darcs.

My understanding was that the question was being deferred until after
1.0.  I personally believe it would be best if darcs eventually handled
file metadata (and symlinks) directly.  (And I think the basic
implementation where you ignore these features on platforms that don't
support them isn't hard.)

> there is apparently a hook on -dist that lets 
> you run a script after the images built but before tar is run.  Possibly 
> a very useful tool would be one win given a list of files, permissions, 
> ownership etc., creates those attributes on the name files in the 
> pre-tar file area.

The problem with putting the metadata in a file is that this file
becomes a conflict bottleneck.  Eg, if I add the file foo and put it's
metadata at the end of the metadata file, and you do the same with bar,
we will get a conflict.

You could solve this by having darcs consider this file a set (instead
of an ordered list) of lines (I think there may have been discussion of
something like this), or by putting the metadata for each file in its
own file.  But again, I think it's easier and friendlier for darcs to
handle it directly.

Andrew