[cvsnt] Re: Binary files are imported as text files (CVSNT 2.5.02 #2096)

[Tony Hoyle]

Thomas Singer wrote:

> It worked in CVSNT 2.0.58d and still works in any half-decent GNU CVS 
> version, so I guess it is a newly introduced incompatibility in CVSNT 
> 2.5.*.

It shouldn't, since the purpose of -k on import is to force all the 
files to be the same (usually binary when I've seen it used, although 
that's rare).

Unfortunately GNU cvs doesn't support any kind of modification of 
expansions so you can't for example apply -ko globally on checkout 
without corrupting all your binary files.. that's just a limitation of 
the older server.

CVSNT disambiguates the whole thing defining absolute and relative 
expansion options.  Global -k options should in most cases be 
relative... you don't know what options the server wants to add on the 
file and overriding it blindly will mean that things get lost.

> Does this also works for files without a period?

Just * will work, but most windows users think in terms of *.*.. they're 
functionally equivalent.

> I doubt, that this is the best (BTW, "bin" was just a sample extension, 
> it also could have been "foo", "bar" or "bazz"). SmartCVS (like WinCVS?) 
> scans the files for "mysterious" characters and then suggests, whether 
> it is a binary or text files, but the user of course can change it 
> manually.

It's a bad idea - you'll override the global options for the files 
you're importing - for example the server may have been set to use -kbx 
or -kB instead of -kb and a client overriding this on import will create 
problems (eclipse is the worst at this, forcing -kkv on everything it 
doesn't know about... working around this is still not complete and will 
probably require some kind of annoying hack).  Unless explicitly 
overriden by the user the server defaults should be used.

Tony