Comment 16 for bug 67589

My concern with this solution is the separation of the permission metadata store from the files/directories object they cover. For example, in case of file renaming (or swapping), which is a common case for configuration files, you'd more than probably lose permission/ownership history.

I've thought of another option that might be simpler and more reusable:

bzr could implement add a generic <meta> text field for each InventoryEntry and two hook functions (get_meta_from_file/dir/link and set_meta_to_file/dir/link) to get this meta info (whatever it might be) and set it back to the real file/dir/link objects. For all functions it considers the files identical if the <meta> info (if any) matches.

This has been discussed before, see [1] or [2], as a way to extend bzr appropriateness for weird applications without going for a specific, non-portable set (owner/perms) or impacting normal bzr usage.

[1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.bazaar-ng.general/1245/focus=1248
[2] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.bazaar-ng.general/1293/focus=1299

This solution looks elegant but might imply deeper structural changes (addition of a tag in InventoryEntry) ?