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How does Mercurial handle Alternate Data Streams (in the NTFS file system)? If it can't handle that, is there a DCVS that does?

EDIT: When I change version with update, what happens to the ADS ? Is it lost (erased)? Is it versioned too? Is it alltogether ignored?

Joseph Hansen
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DonkeyMaster
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  • Why are you storing information in alternate data streams, that you want to store in source control? What kind of information is that? – Lasse V. Karlsen Jan 11 '11 at 14:26
  • I would think alternate streams would be a no-no with any RCS distributed or not. Do you have a mix of OSs or are all users of the RCS on Windows? – JimR Jan 11 '11 at 14:26
  • @JimR The ADS is only useful to Windows Users (it's ok if the information is not readable in other OSes as long as it's restored when the file returns to windows) – DonkeyMaster Jan 12 '11 at 10:45
  • @Lasse V. Karlsen I'm storing a timestamp used by another application. If there's no way of storing this information in the ADS, I'll either use a plain text file (meaning I'll have to write a new tool) or I'll not store the timestamp anymore. I also wanted to know, when I change version, what happens to the ADS ? Is it lost? Is it versioned too? Is it alltogether ignored? – DonkeyMaster Jan 12 '11 at 10:49
  • That was exactly my point, unclear as it is. Of the 6 or so RCS I've used, none have used ADS that I noticed. I have used SVN, CVS, Perforce in 2003/2004, RCS in the early 90s, Clearcase in 2002+, GIT and Source Safe. – JimR Jan 12 '11 at 10:56
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    I could see a case where you main want to store additional info (maybe annotations) with your source code files. – Tal Even-Tov Mar 12 '15 at 08:47

1 Answers1

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Mercurial does not store alternate data stream. Additionally, they are likely to be overwritten on update.

I don't think any of the open source VCS I know handle that kind of thing (even permissions are usually not handled).

tonfa
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