Re: [DESIGN] Aliases? (Was: RE: Re: I, too, miss tags.)

On Feb 24, 2006, at 18:11, robert@infotility.com wrote:

> Since we know already that symbolic aliases are useful
> (HEAD, BASE, etc) why not set up a mechanism to allow
> users to make new ones?
>
> Various correspondents have suggested workarounds or
> hacks of various kinds. Thanks guys, but if there's
> evidence that there is widespread desire for this feature
> (namely that it has been solved multiple times by
> multiple persons) why not just build it into the standard release?

I for one just don't understand yet what functionality is being gained.

Given a project named $P and a repository whose root is $R, and a
standard trunk/branches/tags structure in the project, and a tag
named $T,

Subversion currently has:

        To create a new tag:

                svn cp $R/$P/{trunk,tags/$T} -m "Creating tag $T"

        To replace an existing tag:

                svn rm $R/$P/tags/$T -m "Removing tag $T"
                svn cp $R/$P/{trunk,tags/$T} -m "Recreating tag $T"

        To check out the tag:

                svn co $R/$P/tags/$T

        To get a log of the tag:

                svn log $R/$P/tags/$T

What's being proposed seems to be:

        To create a new tag:

                svn alias [-r HEAD] $T $R/$P/trunk

        To replace an existing tag:

                svn alias -force [-r HEAD] $T $R/$P/trunk

        To check out the tag:

                svn co -r $T $R/$P/trunk

        To get a log of the tag:

                svn log -r $T:0 $R/$P/trunk

Is it just this alternate syntax that's desired, or is there some
additional functionality that's gained over Subversion's existing
tagging method that I'm just not seeing at the moment?

The idea of CVS-like tags, or revision aliases, or revision labels,
or symbolic names for revisions, has come up on this mailing list
many, many times before (you can search the list archives for some of
those terms if you're interested). But I don't think anyone has so
far succeeded in making a compelling enough case that the benefit of
having this feature would outweigh the considerable development
effort needed to implement it.

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Received on Fri Feb 24 18:40:35 2006