Thoughts on querrying for properties

I'm new to SVN and so far I like what I have seen. However, I would
like to suggest a few enhancement that I think would be very helpful in
certain situations. In part I'm elaborating on the "Searching for
properties" thread.

For at least "svn log" it would be nice if there was a way of restrict
the output to specified properties that have specified values. For
example, let's say a change is made in a given branch and has a given
revision. The change is then merged/ported to another branch; which
would mean another revision. It would be useful to have a single
property that tied the revisions together. Let's say this property was
named "bug" and was set to the first revision in which the change was
done. The complete history of a given change, including every branch
that it was merged to, could then be seen by invoking:
    svn log -v -r bug=33
assuming the bug was called "33" and the current working directory was
the top level of the repository with the branches and trunk underneath it.

I suppose the syntax could be expanded indefinitely. For example, it
might be possible to have something like
    svn log -v -r '(bug=33||bug=55)&&priority<3'
For versioned properties the property could take the place of files and
directories:
    svn log -v bug=33

For unversioned properties it would be helpful if it was possible to
query for more than one property at a time. I can understand not
wanting users to be able to change multiple unversioned properties with
a single command as doing so destroys information, but there shouldn't
be any harm in users being able to query multiple revisions.

For "svn log" it would be helpful if there was an option to display the
unversioned properties, with or without their values, along with the log
messages.

Also, it would be nice if ordinary users had the ability to append a log
message to a given revision without also having the ability to destroy
the existing message. One way of doing this would be to have multiple
svn:logN properties that ordinary users would only be able to create
when committing, but would not be able to edit or delete:
    svn:log1
    svn:log2
    svn:log3
"svn log" would then concatenate the svn:logN properties, possibly with
a separator, each time "svn log" is invoked. Perhaps each query to
svn:log would magically return the svn:logN properties concatenated.

I realize that much of this can be done with scripting, but it might be
more efficient if it was part of the tool. If I've overlooked ways in
which the above can already be done then please ignore this message.

-- 
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|          Steven Elliott          |      selliott4@austin.rr.com     |
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