Help settle an argument about managing binary files

[Arne Babenhauserheide]

Am Montag 27 April 2009 16:26:14 schrieb Greg Ward:
> "bigfiles" extension.  (Under source control, you just put a text
> file that contains filenames and hashes, and then have a way to fetch
> those files when they are needed.)  In fact, I've already implemented
> that for the RPMs that we used to keep in CVS.  But the problem with
> that is that all those different versions of the user manual need to
> live *somewhere*, so you can fetch them to build old versions.  If you
> don't put them in the source control system, then you're just
> reinventing source control.  That seems stupid.
>
> Has anyone come up with a good solution to this eternal dilemma?

I'd say you already got it quite well with the bigfiles extension. 

It means people won't have to have every version locally, but you will still 
know that you have the correct version. 

You have to keep every version of the bigfiles somewhere, and for big binary 
files you'll be snapshotting anyway (likely no useful diffs), so using the 
bigfiles extension seems perfectly justified. 

On the long term it would be ideal to use SVGs for images and for example 
scribus (xml - design) and text files (content) for the user guide - or LaTeX 
and similar. 

In my opinion snapshots are not reinventing version control. Instead they are 
an optimization for a special case, which is supported by Mercurial via the 
bigfiles extension. 

I hope that helps a bit. 

Remember, though, that I'm no expert and no wise grandfather, but just a user 
who really likes Mercurial :) 

Best wishes, 
Arne

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