Re: SVN API

Ronald Cannes wrote:

>> > Of course it is. "svnadmin create" could append to an "svn-index"
>> file that
>> > the svn server process read from. Given that, implementing "svn list
>> > repositories" should be quite possible to implement.

1. There is _no_ reason for repositories to be connnected.

    - They could be created by different UID's..
    - who would have write permissions to alter the index?
    - what about when you cant write to the index, are you excempt from
the list, or does the create/delete operation fail?
    - How would you control who can see what parts of the index?

2. How would this be ensured to be upto-date?

   - would repository creation/deletion fail if the index cannot be updated?
   - when people rm -r repos, the index isn't updated, but the repos
isn't there anymore

3. The feature should be disabled by default

   - I'm pretty sure, just about everybody is going to have a different
view about this is going to work -- and even if it's to be included.

>> You can file this as a post 1.0 feature request if you'd like, but this
>> is so low priority, I've got to sit on the floor to write this mail. ;-)

> I don't understand why this has such a low priority.

Because you haven't convinced people it's usefull, and there are many
open questions about it's semantices and implementation.

> Soon we'll have 20 repositories and a lot of people are going to check
> out at various times and I'm expecting a LOT of mails, asking about the
> repository name :-(

Create an index. If you want you can even make a script that updates the
index.

An index file, possibly created by a script is _so_ much easier than to
  settle on all the choices above. Every possible choice is probably
valid in some context, so I don't see how an implementation inside SVN
could be successfull in providing most of the userbase with what they want.

Have you thought about not making that many repositories? just create
one (or a few) repositor(y|ies), and make subdirs.

> There is a reason why most SCM systems have this capability...

Huh? which ones? must have overlooked it.

> Doing a "svn list repos" would be very helpful to the users and would
> take a burden of the admin (especially if you could attach comments to
> the repositories which would appear in this listing.)

how abot, a common repos at svn.foo.bar, an svn_list script, implemented as:

#!/bin/sh
exec wget -q -O - http://svn.foo.bar/index.txt

Now creating a new repos is:

svnadmin create repos
svn co -N svn.foo.bar
echo http://the_path/repos >>svn.foo.bar/index.txt
svn commit -m 'added repository' svn.foo.bar/index.txt
rm -r svn.foo.bar

If the index becomes out-of-date, it's easy to fix.

> While this is not a showstopper, it is something I'd expect from a
> production-quality versioning system (hence not POST 1.0)

I don't think you can push this feature into SVN before 1.0, if ever.

Are you really sure it's SVN's responsibility to solve this problem?

> But at least you're not in the basement yet ;-)

Coincidentally, i'm in a basement right now :), not that i've got a big
say in the matter.

-- 
Helge
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