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Re: [PATCH][RESEND] Issue #1295 (take 5)

From: <cmpilato_at_collab.net>
Date: 2003-05-23 16:08:40 CEST

"Life is hard, and then you die" <ronald@innovation.ch> writes:

> We're all clear on that this feature does provide something that's not
> possible using other mechanisms - 'svn commit --targets' certainly
> gets you mostly there. However, as has been pointed out, it's a
> convenience feature.

I believe that's an accurate assessment.

> Why are there 3 ways to provide a log message (-m, -F, and the
> editor) when -F would suffice?

The simplest answer is: "Because CVS users have become very, *very*
accustomed to both of these behaviors."

> The more straightforward the UI, the more folks will use it and like
> it. In fact, the above example and the --depth stuff shows that even
> the current tools aren't sufficient: because -F still walks the
> directory if you list a directory in there (is this a bug?), there is
> in fact no way (even with --depth?) to check in changes to just the
> directory and selected (but not all) files underneath it.

$ svn ci -N directory directory/file1 directory/file2

What's wrong with that?

> For those worried about folks shooting themselves in the foot: how
> about a config directive, not compile-time, but in .subversion/config
> to enable or disable this feature (just the UI part, not the core)?
> I'd prefer this to default to being on, and if you find that for some
> reason too many folks do end up shooting themselves then you can
> always change the default to off - but I doubt that'll be a problem.

Contrary to popular belief, config options aren't the solution to
every UI dispute this list incurs. There is an actual cost to
developing and maintaining every new cutesy feature that comes along.
There is an added cost to maintaining such a feature when its behavior
is conditional based on some config option.

Now, I'm not saying that this feature shouldn't exist, and I'm not
saying that it should. I'm just saying that we don't get features for
free, and no amount of config-optionry will fix that.

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Received on Fri May 23 16:14:35 2003

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