Single-line serialisation of arrays causes many git conflicts

[wjt]

Currently, arrays are serialised to .tres files on a single line. In particular, in project.godot (which I'm pretty sure is parsed as a resource file), locale/translations_pot_files is a PackedStringArray, all on one line.

This is basically guaranteed to cause conflicts when two developers each add a new translatable file in parallel branches, and the resulting diff is hard to read. In our project, we are using Godot Dialogue Manager, which automatically appends dialogue files to this array – this is causing frequent conflicts even with just a few developers.

If arrays were serialised with one element per line, rather than all on one line, it would make diffs more readable, and conflicts less likely (and easier to resolve), at the cost of one byte (the newline) per array element. IMO this trade-off would be worth it.

[AThousandShips]

Related:

• Split project.godot into multiple files to reduce merge conflicts #10549
• Make Object text-based serialization more readable and VCS-friendly #9774

[wjt]

Ah yes, #9774 is a very similar proposal and from there I see:

• Indent dictionaries and arrays in text scene/resource formats godot#32124

with the same motivation which would solve this problem.

[wjt]

(I promise I searched but perhaps my -ise spelling of serialisation is why #9774 didn't come up.)

[Calinou]

Thanks for the proposal! Consolidating in #9774.