RFR: 8360774: Use text representation of normalization data files

[Magnus Ihse Bursie]

On Fri, 27 Jun 2025 20:45:14 GMT, Naoto Sato <naoto at openjdk.org> wrote:

> The ICU4J component currently stores binary data files directly in the repository. This change replaces them with base64-encoded text files and converts them to binary during the build process

What is the point of this change? If the files were changed to some kind of readable text format, I would think it was a good change. Also, if this is the representation that we get from upstream, then I can understand it as well (but then a comment about it would be good).

Just converting a binary file to base64 does not accomplish anything of value. It is true that we try to avoid binary files, but if what we need actually *is* a binary file, then we better store it as such, rather than to taking a detour over base64.

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PR Comment: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/26027#issuecomment-3014373091