From: Nix <nix@esperi.org.uk>
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 22:05:03 GMT
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] Re: Empty directories...
Message-ID: <87hcnun5dc.fsf@hades.wkstn.nix>
In-Reply-To: <87lkd6n62i.fsf@hades.wkstn.nix>

On 23 Jul 2007, nix@esperi.org.uk outgrape:
> (I'd recommend storing the names of user/group file owners as well as
> the uids, so you can --- given suitable permissions --- chown to the
> right username in preference to uid if that user exists at checkout
> time.)

Suddenly this gets more complex. git-merge-file(1) has to understand the
contents of this file, so as not to consider merges conflicting unless
two files actually have different permissions (i.e. doing a line by line
diff, and combining the two such that at most one file with a given name
exists in the result), and so as not to consider lines with differing
ownerships conflicting unless we're running under a uid in which we can
change ownerships at all. (I'd like to track ownership but it's looking
like a bit of a nest of snakes.)

And the problem is that while git has a lot of strategies for merging
*trees*, its file merge system is totally unpluggable: it just falls
back to xdiff's merging system. I guess I'll have to add that feature :)

(How does this cope with binary files, I wonder? I seem to recall
something about that flying past back before the volume of the git list
overwhelmed me...)