Since FLA is binary you can't have multiple people editing assets in the same FLA at once because binary files can't be merged in source control systems. At first glance XFL seems like a great solution to this problem, but I've run into a number of issues using it in practice. Mostly it is a matter of XML files changing when the data they contain is essentially the same.
- The files listed in DOMDocument.xml don't seem to be listed in any deterministic order, and thus two of them can contain exactly the same file list but appear to be very different to source control diff's. When multiple people are making changes and trying to merge them it can be impossible for diff to tell the difference between changed lines and inserted/removed lines.
- The XML files are generated somewhat differently on PC vs. Mac. At the very least the direction of slashes (/ vs \) in paths is different. It also seems that some numbers get saved with different precision.
- More?
Has anyone had any luck with this? If not, is it Adobe's intention for XFL files to be usable that way? It sure would be helpful to us.
- Patrick