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On Wednesday 13 November 2002 12:21, John Barstow wrote:
> I would be much more sanguine about such a change if we also *always*
> checked file size as well. That way we sweep the edge cases where the
> timestamp is screwed up but the file changed anyways.
I almost suggested the same thing, but then I wondered: is it better to have a
bigger edge case here, for the sake of simplicity and consistancy to the
user?
It's impossible to not have an edge case without doing fulltext comparisons,
which means that if users are in a situation where they are going to
experience this problem, there has to be some education involved. Users will
have to learn that "if the timestamp is the same, svn will ignore the
changes." If the user notices that svn is ignoring his changes, then he can
easily trace it back to this documented limitation.
Users who are likely to see this problem will probably see it more than once,
because they will be using some pattern (wierd Windows copy program, etc.)
consistantly. If svn checks the file size, then the edge case will be very
unlikely, and it will probably never happen. When it does happen, it will
seem like a spurious bug, rather than something that happens consistantly.
Education doesn't happen until the user sees the problem. If he is using a
bad pattern that leaves the timestamp unchanged, then he needs to experience
the problems associated with it quickly so that he can find a new pattern or
tool, rather than continuing to use the bad pattern until some sneaky "bug"
shows up only for specific files and situations.
- --
Peter Davis
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Received on Wed Nov 13 21:32:40 2002