Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!aioe.org!news.swapon.de!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Martin =?UTF-8?Q?Sch=C3=B6=C3=B6n?= Newsgroups: comp.lang.python Subject: Re: [OT] VCS for non-text (was Development tools and practices for Pythonistas) Date: 1 May 2011 19:53:08 GMT Organization: @ Home Lines: 47 Message-ID: <925s14FokqU1@mid.individual.net> References: <58a6bb1b-a98e-4c4a-86ea-09e040cb2d21@r35g2000prj.googlegroups.com> <877hagoa0u.fsf@benfinney.id.au> <00dr88-846.ln1@svn.schaathun.net> <87mxj8ir4u.fsf@benfinney.id.au> <5qqs88-9e7.ln1@svn.schaathun.net> <9222afFmqjU1@mid.individual.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: individual.net 5UqzPWabljmuNQ0b9OzsLQMdMZYsBQHCbA4kuxx4/98wdYHDyI Cancel-Lock: sha1:Cc5U4rGHQyOB1Q8hTaOo2tVM7tk= User-Agent: slrn/pre1.0.0-18 (Linux) Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.python:4411 On 2011-04-30, Tim Chase wrote: > On 04/30/2011 04:15 AM, Martin Schöön wrote: >> You guys are very code focused, which is natural given where we are. >> >> Having absorbed what I have seen here, looked a little at Mercurial, >> read a little on the webs of Fossil and Bazaar I start to think there >> is great merit in all this VCS stuff for other types of projects. >> >> At work my projects contain very little coding (some Python, some >> matlab/scilab perhaps) but a fair amount of CAD/CAE, written >> reports, presentations (OpenOffice and that other Office), >> spread sheets etc etc. A mixture of ascii-files and various >> proprietary formats most of which is stored in binary form. >> Some of the CAE-work generate pretty big files stored >> in dynamically created subdirectories. > > For non-text blobs, it takes a little bit of insight to get the > most out of them. For OpenDocument (Open/Libre Office > documents), they're zipped files containing text/XML which can be > diff'ed with more meaning. Usually there are custom filters for > git[1], Mercurial[2] and Bazaar[3] which will unpack the zipped > file contents before committing and give you more sensible diffs. > Likewise, for images (gif/jpg/tiff/raw/etc), there are > particular image-diff programs which make it easier to tell what > happened, as the textual diff of binary files is pretty useless. > However some images (such as .svg files) are XML/text inside, > and diff pretty nicely without extra effort. > > I can't speak to CAD/CAE, but it would have to be addressed on a > per-format basis in your given VCS. That said, you *can* store > the binary blobs in each, it's just not as useful without > meaningful comparisons. > > -tkc > > [1] > http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/git/2008/9/15/3305014 > > [2] > http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/HandlingOpenDocumentFiles > > [3] > http://doc.bazaar.canonical.com/plugins/en/oodiff.html > All very useful information. Thank you for that Tim. /Martin