Comment 10 for bug 109730

Unmergeable files (binary blobs) are really what this about, and use of locking is more or less mandatory -- though I fully appreciate the problems of allowing locking. Subversion's choice of unlock on commit is a good one and alleviates a great majority of the problems.

I had started on a plugin to support lock status metadata, but as the saying goes s$$$ happens, and I haven't really got beyond getting to the starting gate -- i.e I have a null plugin that loads.

If there were others with some cycles to help work on this, we could form a cabal (open to anyone of course) and use branches on Launchpad to progress things.

A number of people chipped in a lot of good ideas about this on the mailing list some time back. If there was more than just me on this, then it would force me to find a wiki page somewhere to create a summary of all the ideas.

I have tried using directories and mv of binary blobs as a way of creating what is effectively locking by renaming, and this can work in some circumstances, however where the binary blobs are part of a larger system, it gets more or less impossible and locking on the central server is the only choice.