Re: [Gnu-arch-users] minor extension to arch protocol

[Tom Lord]

    > From: "Mark A. Flacy" <address@hidden>

    > IIRC, the "=" prefix indicates user-editable meta-data that is part of the
    > archive.   I'm not for the change, myself.

[The "=" prefix on the file "{arch}/=tagging-method" file, you mean.]

It does not indicate "user-editable".

It does mean that, inside of "{arch}", the entire namespace of files
whose names are also valid category names is available.

If "=tagging-method" were renamed "tagging-method", then what would
happen if a project had a category named "tagging-method"?

Another use of the same pattern is in the archive format: =meta-info.

People sometimes use the prefix "." for that purpose but, as we all
know, there are more punctuation characters than that on your keyboard
and the only problem here is that some authors of shells have been
rather grabby about those punctuation characters, for no good reason
whatsoever.

-t