Re: svn diff, svn merge, and vendor branches (long)

Eric Gillespie <epg@pretzelnet.org> writes:

> Diffing a and b with diff(1) produces a meaningful diff.
> Diffing the two gnuserv.c versions with diff(1) or diffing with
> svn when they share ancestry produces the meaningful diff,
> diffing with svn they *don't* share ancestry produces a useless
> diff.

You keep repeating "useless". OK, I'll keep repeating "correct".
Your "useless" result shows me that the files are not related? How is
that useless?

[snip]

> Then you aren't listening. If svn would simply hand off the
> files to diff(1) *regardless* of whether they're files, or
> directories, or widgets, you'd get meaningful results where
> possible or equally useless results where not.

That would make 'svn diff' totally different from 'svn merge', I would
object strongly. In addition, given your response to the question
below, I don't understand how "handing off to diff" does what you
want.

> > svn diff http://host/repo/dir1 http://host/repo/dir3/dir4
> > svn diff http://host/repo/dir1 http://host/repo/dir3
> >
> > Would they show different diffs for foo.c?
>
> It shouldn't.

I don't see how to implement it. With a repository

  /repos/dir1/foo.c
        /dir3/dir4/foo.c

you want

  svn diff http://host/repo/dir1/foo.c http://host/repo/dir3/dir4/foo.c
  svn diff http://host/repo/dir1 http://host/repo/dir3/dir4
  svn diff http://host/repo/dir1 http://host/repo/dir3

to show the same diff for foo.c. I don't see how "hand off to diff"
will do that. Suppose I add

       /dir3/dir5/foo.c

What does

  svn diff http://host/repo/dir1 http://host/repo/dir3

show now?

I guess the question I really have is: why you don't just ensure that
your files have the proper revision history? If they did, Subversion
would do what you want.

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