Re: removing white space highlight

[Robert Thorpe <rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com>]

Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> writes:

> Robert Thorpe <rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com> writes:
>
>> But, what if Harry just deleted some extraneous
>> whitespace from the end of the line? In that case we
>> can't be sure when important_parameter was last set.
>> It may be very old.
>
> You can do it to the entire project once (and do
> nothing else at that point).

Let's say I remove whitespace from the entire project.  I then check the
project back in.  Every line that has whitespace removed is flagged as
modified.  It's added to the repository with my name, date and a new
revision number.  So, the problem I've described still occurs.

To go back to my previous example

$ svn blame nasty.c
     103      sally /* important_parameter should be */
     103      sally /* set for modern memory sizes. */
     110      rob   int important_parameter = 42;
     103      sally

Here, I have removed all the whitespace at revision 110.  That makes it
look as though I set the value of important_parameter then.  In fact, it
was set much earlier.

After a long time (maybe a decade), the vast majority of lines in all
the files would have been changed.  After that the problem wouldn't
arise again, but it's a very high price to pay.

Of course, if it were possible to modify the version control program
then this would be possible.  Doing that is "non-trivial", as they say.

> Then add automatic
> cleaning upon submission, don't log the cleaning, and
> last propagate the correct files to anyone who doesn't
> have them.
>
>> Not all version controls systems have that.
>
> Apparently not :)

You don't understand version control systems.  You can't change how they
work easily.

>> It's also not very well known and tools that use the
>> VC system (GUIs and Editors) may not use it.
>
> The editors don't need it, tho it can be useful for
> other purposes (e.g., your own files) and it doesn't
> hurt having it there as well.

This part of the discussion was about what happens if the version
control system has an option to deal with whitespace changes.  For
example, "-x -b" in Subversion.

In a large project, are you going to tell people that they can't use
front-ends to version-control?

Let's say, for example, that Vim doesn't support those switches.  Are you
going to say "I'm sorry Vim users, you have to use command line svn."

BR,
Robert Thorpe