<peter.westlake@arm.com> writes:
> - the main problem area of CVS that Subversion does not (yet) appear to
> improve upon is modules. CVS modules are badly broken, in that you have to
> hack around in the internal files of the repository to set them up, and the
> module structure is not versioned. So if I make a module include another,
> and check out the parent module from a date before I did that, I get the
> included module. What scope is there for putting a fully versioned module
> mechanism into Subversion? I get the impression that it ought not to be
> that difficult if approached in the right way. Such an implementation would
> have to support recursive operations, e.g. branching a module and all its
> sub-modules. Of course, this isn't always what you want, so there would
> have to be two ways to define a sub-module: one where the sub-module would
> be thought of as "part of" the parent module, and branched with it, and one
> where it would be thought of as "referenced by" or "linked to" the parent,
> so it would not be branched. Instead, both branches of the parent module
> would point to the same sub-module. There is also the orthogonal
> distinction of static vs dynamic sub-modules, which corresponds roughly to
> using a tag or a branch. If a module contains a static link to another,
> then any checkout of the parent module will get the same revision of the
> sub-module. With a dynamic link, it gets the tip. If the parent module is
> checked out from some time in the past, it would get the revision of the
> dynamic module current at that time.
>
> Have I explained all this in a way that makes sense? If so, do you think
> that the design of Subversion would permit these functions to be added
> cleanly?
What you describe is roughly what we have been thinking about for
module support, actually...
This has been discussed informally a bit, iirc, but we haven't got
concrete implementation plans yet, mainly because there's so much else
to work on and modules seem like something to be done over a mature
repository design, rather than early on.
I'm looking forward to stealing^H^H^H^H^H^H^H learning from Mark
Chu-Carroll's modules experience when we get to that point.
I doubt we'll be tackling this anytime in the next few months. That
could change if someone gets an inspired design and volunteers to do
it, though. :-)
-Karl
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Received on Sat Oct 21 14:36:33 2006