On Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 12:33 AM, Stephan Beal <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 6:32 PM, Eric Rubin-Smith <[email protected]> wrote: >> A user who only ever uses fossil on unix should get unix symlink semantics >> on unix, without quirks or surprises. Surely you and DRH would agree with >> that? > > i can't speak for Richard, but if i had my way, fossil wouldn't support > symlinks at all. They are inherently platform-dependent and, IMHO, belong in > the build process, not the SCM. They are a big can of worms, as we can see > by large amount of emails on the topic. To be clear: i use symlinks all over > the place on my systems, i just refuse to use them in an SCM. Call me old > fashioned.
When this discussion started (many messages ago), I shared Mr Rubin-Smith's opinion. but as arguments were presented, I'm now leaning towards Mr. Beal's. We're arguing how much file system semantics should 'fossil' manage? The more you manage, the tougher it gets to be cross-platform. How much of the spectrum should fossil track: - Files. This is a no-brainer; the whole purpose is to track changing file contents. - Directories. Also a no-brainer; all serious file systems have a way to organize files into directory trees (although I guess this means fossil won't run on CPM machines) and directories are a very useful way to organize a project's files. - Permissions. As a fossil user, I haven't been tripped up by incorrect permissions, so I don't know if it saves Unix permissions or not. Whatever it's doing, it seems correct in a Unix-like environment. - Symlinks. Now we're getting into file system specifics. Some users may want to track them because they find them useful. What about users that find FIFOs or block devices or character device useful? Should fossil attempt to save enough information to recreate them? - Extended attributes. Many file systems now have extended attributes. Should Mac users complain because fossil doesn't support HFS+ extended attributes or resource forks? I think fossil can support the permissions level. Anything further down in the previous list should be part of the project's build cycle. -- Rich _______________________________________________ fossil-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.fossil-scm.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fossil-users
