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Re: metadata versioning

From: Ben Collins-Sussman <sussman_at_collab.net>
Date: 2005-03-08 23:38:58 CET

On Mar 8, 2005, at 4:22 PM, Molle Bestefich wrote:

> John Peacock wrote:
>> Molle Bestefich wrote:
>>> Will there be versioning of the 'log message' and 'author'
>>> properties,
>>> so that they can be changed post-commit without resorting to a
>>> custom-built hook mechanism trying to do it's own sort-of-versioning
>>> (whatever)?
>>
>> It may be more profitable to describe *what* you intend to accomplish
>> rather
>> than *how* you want to accomplish it. For example, what part of log
>> and author
>> being revprops is a problem for what you want to do? What do you
>> want your
>> post-commit hook to be doing?
>
> It's not a post-commit hook, it's a pre-revprop-change hook.
> I meant "post commit" as in "editing/changing a log message or author
> field at a point in time after the original commit has been done".
>
> I guess that what I'd like to accomplish is that I'd like to save
> Subversion users the time and effort they spend implementing custom
> hooks by having a general and standardized solution. I uttered
> elsewhere that since metadata is versioned in the next upcoming major
> release of Subversion, changing log messages and authors on past
> commits wouldn't need a pre-revprop-change hook, but then I got a
> doubt and came here to check.
>

I think you're quite confused.

1. Metadata attached to files and directories ("properties") has
always been versioned in Subversion.

2. Metadata attached to revisions (authors, log messages, dates) have
always been unversioned.

3. Users have always been able to edit either type of metadata from
their clients.

4. The "pre-revprop-change-hook" is nothing but a safeguard. Changing
the unversioned metadata is a lossy operation, so it's turned off by
default. If you tweak the pre-revprop-change-hook to always return
success, then nothing more need be done. It's not the hook changing
the data; it's the client. The hook is just a potential blocker of
the operation, nothing more.

5. The next release of subversion (1.2) adds "locking" support -- that
is, the ability to lock a file in the repository, preventing anyone
from changing it but you.

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Received on Tue Mar 8 23:40:23 2005

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