Re: Feature Ideas

On Thu, Aug 28, 2003 at 07:37:00AM -0700, Kumaran Santhanam wrote:
> > I am interested to know why explicit editing is useful and
> > important to you.
> >
> > You appear to be describing the sort of interface that would be
> > used with an exclusive locking mechanism, but not proposing to
> > design or implement the actual locking (which needs to involve
> > the server) yet. Please could you say what benefit this will
> > give on its own. It looks to me like it will give the illusion
>
> Actually, explicit edit and locking are actually orthogonal.
> Explicit edit is a client-side feature which manages the user's
> file permissions. It also may or may not inform the server if
> somebody is editing a file.
>
> There are commercial SCMs which implement this, mostly for two
> reasons: 1) Prevent accidental editing by the user (using the
> read-only attribute) 2) Allow others to see what files are being
> worked on.

There is something else that you can gain by having an explicit svn edit.

Namely, better scalability to large working copies, because you can cache
which files you need to submit, instead of having to crawl the whole working
copy to check for files that are different.

I know at work, where my working copy is around 300,000 files, I wouldn't use
any scm system that crawlded for changes...

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kevin Pilch-Bisson                    http://www.pilch-bisson.net
     "Historically speaking, the presences of wheels in Unix
     has never precluded their reinvention." - Larry Wall
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