Version Control with Subversion, 2nd Edition

Binary Files and Translation

In the most general sense, Subversion handles binary files more gracefully than CVS does. Because CVS uses RCS, it can only store successive full copies of a changing binary file. Subversion, however, expresses differences between files using a binary differencing algorithm, regardless of whether they contain textual or binary data. That means all files are stored differentially (compressed) in the repository.

CVS users have to mark binary files with -kb flags to prevent data from being garbled (due to keyword expansion and line-ending translations). They sometimes forget to do this.

Subversion takes the more paranoid route. First, it never performs any kind of keyword or line-ending translation unless you explicitly ask it to do so (see Keyword Substitution and End-of-Line Character Sequences for more details). By default, Subversion treats all file data as literal byte strings, and files are always stored in the repository in an untranslated state.

Second, Subversion maintains an internal notion of whether a file is “text” or “binary” data, but this notion is only extant in the working copy. During an svn update, Subversion will perform contextual merges on locally modified text files, but it will not attempt to do so for binary files.

To determine whether a contextual merge is possible, Subversion examines the svn:mime-type property. If the file has no svn:mime-type property, or has a MIME type that is textual (e.g., text/*), Subversion assumes it is ...