handling resource files

[JonnyDee]

> With SS, we do an exclusive checkout of resource files to avoid this
> problem. I'd like to know how this is handled in Mercurial shops.

Something like an "exclusive checkout" is not possible with a
distributed VCS. You cannot lock a file. This is an issue which maybe
needs communication between the developers. In our company we also
version control Word-Documents and other binary files. And if two or
more people happen to edit the same file, commit, and push their
changes we get merge conflicts between binary files which are, as a
worst case, not possible to resolve at all. So we need to communicate
with each other and keep each other informed about who works on which
file at the moment. This may seem like an overhead, but on the other
side communication not only helps to avoid conflicts at all but it
also avoids duplicate work and advocates information flow between team
members.

Jonny Dee