Re: SVN, .SVN, and other meta-data directorys

Thom Wood <thom@collab.net> writes:
> sorry if this sound ignorant, but why do we need to store the
> meta-data in the source tree at all, for example perforce (see preforce.com)
> names the meta-data (in a env-var) and stores it in the server, one could
> to something similar and store the meta-data in a known place on the
> local file system.

Storing on the server doesn't scale to zillions on anonymous
checkouts.

Storing in a canonical place on the local filesystem makes the client
dependent on the permissions of some random location on the filesystem
[in addition to the checkout directory], and also violates the
principle that the meta-data should disappear when the real data does.
If people don't clean up carefully, you'd end up with lots of stale
metadata sitting around, right next to still-valid metadata. Makes
for confusing debugging.
Received on Sat Oct 21 14:36:06 2006