[svn.haxx.se] · SVN Dev · SVN Users · SVN Org · TSVN Dev · TSVN Users · Subclipse Dev · Subclipse Users · this month's index

RE: original timestamp preservation

From: Tardif, Sebastien <STARDIF_at_anacomp.com>
Date: 2005-06-28 20:54:27 CEST

I like this: some momentum.

So let me resume my frustration:
From the point of view of a user, Subversion is just a tool that should
be transparent as possible. The only common knowledge my mommy and I
know about computer is that files as a name and a modification date. In
the perspective of knowing that subversion know about the UNIX security
flag but doesn't know about the original modification date is quite
perplexing.

Other thread asked this important question: "While should we care about
the commit date of a specific file instead of it's modification date?".
This should set the answer to: "What should be the default behavior?"

A+ to SourceSafe :-)

-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Collins-Sussman [mailto:sussman@collab.net]
Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2005 1:52 PM
To: svn-dev-list
Subject: original timestamp preservation

This question keeps coming up, over and over, in both IRC and the users@
list:

    When I import a project into subversion, why aren't the original
    timestamps being preserved?

A lot of newbies are surprised. Some are frustrated and throw insults
at the project. And to make things worse, the answers they get back are
mixed.

I feel like we're in a state of limbo regarding our "official" project
answer to this question. What I'd really like to do is write a new FAQ
that says either

    * Subversion has no plans to support this feature, here's why.

    * Subversion plans to support this feature someday, here's the
      filed issue.

Sometimes users are told, "hey, go try this branch from p.marek, it
should do what you want". But is that branch really supported? Will it
ever be integrated? My recollection is that at some point we were in
process of trying to squeeze a real design spec for the feature, but
because that never quite happened, the branch is just sitting there.

Other times, we give users the opposite message. Some of us (like me)
think the feature is unnecessary. Most everyone who complains about the
current behavior is upset because their FTP scripts can't sync stuff
based on timestamps anymore, to which we say: "change your processes,
you should be using 'svn up' to sync things now."

So what I'd really like to do is pull ourselves out of limbo on this
issue. Are we going to file an new-feature issue to develop a real
design spec? Or are we going to give an official explanation as to why
we're not doing the feature? We need to decide.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@subversion.tigris.org
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@subversion.tigris.org

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@subversion.tigris.org
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@subversion.tigris.org
Received on Tue Jun 28 20:55:41 2005

This is an archived mail posted to the Subversion Dev mailing list.

This site is subject to the Apache Privacy Policy and the Apache Public Forum Archive Policy.