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Re: SVN API

From: Ben Collins-Sussman <sussman_at_collab.net>
Date: 2003-09-11 15:12:24 CEST

"Ronald Cannes" <roncannes@hotmail.com> writes:

> A server-side script is not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for new
> client API functionality + a "svn list-repos" function for our users.

Ronald, what you want is a Really Huge Thing, given svn's
architecture. You want a network command to list repositories, and
there are at least huge two problem with this.

First... whenever the svn client contacts the network, it opens a URL
with a certain schema: either file:///, http(s)://, or
svn(+tunnel)://. The assumption is that the URL *is* a repository
already. There's no concept of the svn client "generically contacting
an svn server". The server-process is *implied* within the idea of
"connecting to a repository URL". Depending on the URL, the server
process might be Apache, or svnserve, or no server at all (in the case
of file:///).

If there's no way to "generically" connect to an svn server, I don't
see how a client can ask the server for a master list of repositories.

Furthermore, repositories can be "exported" through any number of
servers and network protocols. It's completely up to the sysadmin.
There's no Master Control Program running that is aware of every
single repository on the system.

So I think the only way to get what you want would be to *create* a
Master Control Program -- probably some kind of
uber-svn-network-daemon that is always running on a specific port
number. 'svnadmin create' would have to register the new repository
with the Master Control Program, and tell the MCP which network
protocol will be exporting the repository. Then we'd have to invent a
new network protocol for the MCP, and teach svn clients to contact it.
And of course we'd ways to unregister/change repos information already
registered with the MCP.

You get the picture... this is no "trivial" task, certainly way too
huge for svn-1.0. It's probably far easier for a sysadmin to just
post a single HTML document on the intranet that lists all project
repositories. It's not like running 'svn list-repos' is so much more
convenient than looking at a web page.

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Received on Thu Sep 11 15:13:15 2003

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