I was concerned about all of the following:
- Subversion not understanding slashes and backslashes,
- Being able to use Cygwin paths as described in Eric's email,
- An apparent lack of testing and user experience in using Subversion in
the way that I am using it (locally, no Apache server, under Cygwin).
The slashes seem to be working okay.
Some other things aren't great:
(1) In order to get svn to work I've had to use absolute Windows
paths for the repository URL, e.g.,
svn co file:///c:/cygwin/home/Andrew/my_repository
I tried many variations on this and this is the only one that I
could get to work.
Right now I use a shell variable called "r" that's set to the path
to the repository, and right now I'm only using one repository, so
things aren't too bad, but still, the situation is less than
desirable. I'd like to be able to do things like
svn co file://~Andrew/my_repository
or at least
svn co file:///Home/Andrew/my_repository
(The path Home/Andrew maps to C:/cygwin/home/Andrew.)
(2) When I do a commit, and svn tries to invoke the editor so that I
can write a commit message, svn doesn't understand my EDITOR variable,
because it's expressed in terms of the Cygwin file system and not the
Windows file system:
$ svn commit FunctionMain.cs
The system cannot find the path specified.
svn: Error calling external program
svn: Commit failed (details follow):
svn: system('/usr/bin/vim svn-commit.64376.00001.tmp') returned 1
$ echo $VISUAL
/usr/bin/vim
| echo $EDITOR
/usr/bin/vim
$
I expect to find more things like this. So far, after considerable
time, I've been able to find workarounds for every barrier that I've
encountered, but as a new Subversion user my experience on Cygwin has
not been very fun. You should not underestimate how painful these
things are for someone that is not familiar with Subversion. Also,
when working with a repository the last thing one wants is to introduce
confusion and increase the probability of destroying something.
I am running with:
svn, version 0.15.0 (r3687)
compiled Nov 9 2002, 11:07:15
As I recall, this is the Subversion binary that was distributed
tigris.org. I'm using the binary instead of a Cygwin-built version
because I couldn't find an existing Cygwin-built binary on the web, and
my attempts to build Subversion on Cygwin failed. The non-Cygwin binary
has little hope of understanding the Cygwin file system. My suggestion
is that the project distribute a for-Cygwin binary that understands the
Cygwin file system. This would save a lot of people a lot of hassle and
allow more people to use Subversion. It would also increase testing
on Cygwin as the cost of trying things on Cygwin would be decreased,
and add confidence in running Subversion under Cygwin. Then we could
get onto the fun of using Subversion instead of messing around with
slashes!
Andrew
----- Forwarded message from "Smith, Eric V." <ericsmith@windsor.com> -----
Subject: RE: Cygwin Install, Misc. Documentation and Install Comments
Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2003 18:20:01 -0500
From: "Smith, Eric V." <ericsmith@windsor.com>
To: <dev@subversion.tigris.org>
> I've been using subversion client (0.15) in combination with
> cygwin with no
> problems at all. Windows accepts forward slashed in filenames
> just as well
> as backslashes (it's cmd.exe which gets confused about it),
> so as long as
> you use relative path-names and avoid cygwin symlinks you
> have no problems.
I think the problem the original poster was talking about was having svn
understand the cygwin "paths", created with "mount". For example, on my
box doing an "ls /tmp" shows the contents of c:/opt/cygwin/tmp, because
c:/opt/cygwin is mounted as /. It would be nice if svn were buildable
as a cygwin app, so it could also understand cygwin's mount table.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew [mailto:asha@onezero.org]
> Sent: maandag 6 januari 2003 21:40
> To: dev@subversion.tigris.org
> Subject: Cygwin Install, Misc. Documentation and Install Comments
>
>
> Hello..
>
> Subversion looks nice. I used CVS for 4 years and would like to use
> Subversion in a new project that I am starting now. I'm itching to
> go -- getting a revision control system in place is the project's top
> priority.
>
> The project is being developed mostly in the Cygwin environment. So,
> I want to use a version of Subversion that knows about
> Cygwin/Unix-like
> path names. It would be awful to have to continually translate paths
> between Unix-style slashes and Windows-style backslashes. Using CVS
> would probably be better than that.
>
> It is possible to invoke a for-Windows Subversion binary from Cygwin,
> but that binary won't know about Cygwin path names. It seems that in
> order to get Subversion to know about Cygwin-style path names, it's
> necessary to use a version of Subversion that was built under Cygwin,
> or at least specifically to handle CYgwin-style paths in some way.
>
> So, a few weeks ago I tried building and installing Subversion under
> Cygwin, using a recent version from the Subversion source repository
> at tigris. (I do not recall which version.) I ran into one or more
> problems running ./configure. I spent several hours debugging the
> script and looking for information at Google, but eventually gave up.
> Unfortunately I have since deleted the directory that contained the
> build and install attmept, so I can't provide much more information.
> I was wondering if anyone had installed Subversion on Cygwin recently.
> At the time I tried to get Subversion to build under Cygwin,
> it looked like
> the last semi-official install attempt was in February (maybe February
> 28 -- I am writing from memory). If nobody has tried this recently,
> could a Subversion build/install guru take a look? February was a
> long time ago -- it would be nice for those of us that just
> want to use
> Subversion to have it work on Cygwin right out of the box.
>
> In return for help with this vague "it won't go on Cygwin" report,
> I am contributing some notes that I made a few weeks ago about ways
> that the Subversion documentation and install process might
> be improved.
> Even though the notes are somewhat raw, I think they're
> comprehensible;
> if something is unclear, let me know and I'll try to clarify.
>
> I've subscribed to dev@subversion.tigris.org to be able to
> see responses.
> I'll probably unsubscribe after a few days, as my interest is
> in getting
> Subversion installed on Cygwin, and not in the high traffic
> on the list.
> Thanks in advance for any help.
>
> - Andrew
>
>
> Here are the notes about the Subversion book.
>
> add date to the title page
>
> svn resolve
> how about having it warn you if there are new conflict markers
> in the file:
> $ svn resolve sandwich
> Not resolved; sandwich contains new conflict markers
> You can use "svn resolve -f" to force resolution.
>
> svn ignore
> bias towards certain files; default should be to ignore nothing
>
> "Note that<svn resolve> --> "Note that <svn resolve>"
> "svn ci --file logmsg" --> "$ svn commit --file logmsg"
>
> page 27: COMMITTED overwrites its table entry
> ("The last revision in which ...")
> I think this happens in an earlier table also; I don't remember where.
>
> How about using lower case letters for head, base, committed,
> and prev?
> I didn't see capital letters anywhere else in svn so far.
>
> page 28 (description of svn import) -- refers to "svnadmin create",
> which has not yet been described in the document at this point.
>
> Explain the name of "svn cat" -- it will make no sense to
> non-UNIX users.
>
> What do the "-500" items mean in the examples with dates and times?
>
> In "svn list" output, instead of showing a _ for every item
> that doesn't have a property, how about just showing nothing
> there (a space)?
> Also, "The columns tell you if a file has ..." -->
> "The columns tell you if a file or directory has ..."
>
> It would be nice for the guided tour to give a quick introduction to
> creating repositories.
>
> What I've read so far of the documentation is quite good.
>
> I desire quick start documentation -- just a few pages (5 at
> most) about
> how to create a repository, check out a file, and check in a
> file, with
> pointers at the end of the quick start documentation to the
> documentation
> for the next-most-common tasks.
>
> Add an index to the document.
>
> About what are currently called "properties" in Subversion parlance:
> I don't know if "property" is a standard term beyond its meaning in
> C#, but from my point of view it's a bit unpleasant to have "property"
> mean one thing in C# and another in Subversion. I wonder if the
> Subversion world would be served best by calling this thing
> "attribute"
> rather than "property" as it's currently called.
>
> Regularly building pre-built binaries for Cygwin and putting
> them and the
> necessary brief install documentation up at tigris might significantly
> expand the Subversion user base. For example I bet making a Cygwin
> binary and install documentation update every six months
> would be fine in
> most cases. Most people are going to be interested in using
> Subversion,
> I think, not in the intricacies of building and installing
> it. I might
> be wrong about how other people feel but at there is a data point here
> from one potential Subversion user that would like to use it
> rather than
> debug builds and installs.
>
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Received on Thu Jan 9 22:52:34 2003