[darcs-users] Unicode filenames (Was: [patch252] Resolve issue1763...)

Eric Kow kowey at darcs.net
Wed Jun 2 15:21:49 UTC 2010


Taking this off the tracker...

Snipped-Eric said:
>> Basically the picture looks like this:
>> 
>>     OS <--> darcs <---> patch files

>> IMHO, what you want is for darcs <--> patch files to always use
>> UTF-8.  On the other hand, the OS <--> darcs part needs some more
>> thought.

On Wed, Jun 02, 2010 at 06:33:06 +0000, Reinier Lamers wrote:
> Given that even enterprisey Java does not have a good solution to this
> problem makes me feel hopeless about finding one for darcs.

I dunno.  Maybe Darcs has a more restricted problem with more room for
hope?

[I don't actually have strong feelings about this.  After all, our move
away from textual filenames is a sort of grumpy/conservative way of
avoiding the issue, which I could see as being ultimately a wise one
(don't try to be too clever or you'll burn your fingers?) With the
exception of '\n' we are 100% agnostic about the contents of your files,
so why do I care about the names?]

> We could of course say that for darcs, filenames are Unicode text.

I guess what prompted my desire for Unicode text in filenames is a
desire for cross-platform repositories.  I thought it would be good if
you could create a darcs repo with Hungarian filenames on your Linux
box, and get it from a Windows box, manipulate it, push some patches in
and everything just sort of works the way you want it to. (What happens
in the Git and Mercurial world?)

But maybe I desire too much.

Since I'm overstretching anyway, but this Eric Sink posting I keep
linking to <http://www.ericsink.com/entries/quirky.html> points to the
sort of thing that we would ideally have some sort of reasonable
behaviour for.  Hmm :-/

If you have access to some pairs in Windows, Linux and MacOS X, you
could have some fun trying these examples out (I can say that for test
#2 about creating a COM1 style filename, darcs add now refuses this
unless you force it to ignore Windows-specific warnings).

> And I haven't even thought about backward compatibility.

You just said the magic word.  I just realised that all my talk belongs
on the darcs 3 wishlist anyway...

-- 
Eric Kow <http://www.nltg.brighton.ac.uk/home/Eric.Kow>
PGP Key ID: 08AC04F9
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