Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Some issues

[Andrew Suffield]

On Wed, Jun 09, 2004 at 08:20:27PM +0200, Florian Weimer wrote:
> * Andrew Suffield:
> 
> >> The changeset format is defined relative to GNU patch and GNU
> >> tar. These data formats are still somewhat in flux.
> >
> > What? I'm not aware of anything more stable than these.
> 
> Yeah, tar is so stable that its format changes never broke dpkg.

That would be correct. Presumably you're referring to the incident
where a subtle change in the way tar generated archives tickled an
obvious bug in the dpkg tar parser (off-by-one error in dpkg coupled
with a lack of range checking on input data). The format never
changed, and it had only worked by the sheer coincidence that all
things creating .debs which contained paths precisely 100 characters
in length used gnu tar (which equally coincidentally hadn't tickled
the bug before).

> >> The changeset format does not handle binaries efficiently, and
> >> certain text files (e.g. XML files not created by a text editor and
> >> formated for readability).
> >
> > Right, nothing does. Unsolved problem. Nothing to do with
> > tla. Supporting this would be fairly easy if the problem were ever
> > solved.
> 
> You are confusing merging with storage.

No, you are. The changeset format is all about merging.

> >> There is no integrated mechanism to atomically commit related
> >> changesets to two branches (even if these branches are contained in
> >> the same archive).
> >
> > I can't imagine why you would want that.
> 
> I think that cross-branch commits are common cases in tla development.
> If grouping changes didn't matter, we would still use CVS.

I don't need to respond to that. I'm just quoting it in case people
missed it the first time.

> > Nor have I ever heard of anything which implements it.
> 
> It's considered a property of most distributed systems which
> permantely store data in a distributed fashion.

Handwaving, while very noticably not giving any examples.

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
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