"svn log" options and semantics

1.

"svn log" prints a row of dashes before each log message, and after the last one. There is an option "--incremental" which suppresses the final row of dashes. This is a trivial thing to have an option for. I think it would be better to have a row of dashes either before or after each message, but not both. In other words, operate in "incremental" mode all the time. This would have minimal impact on the prettiness of the display (and there are more serious pretiness concerns than this), and would obviate the need for that option.

2.

"svn log -rX:Y" prints the logs from the repository* revision at or before X up to the revision at or before Y, inclusive. (* Not the item's revision at or before X, which can be different when X is a date.) That means that, when specified by date, a revision before the requested period may be displayed as well, depending on what the revision history was in other parts of the repository before the specified start date.

  ~/tmp/svn-sandbox> svn log -q -r{2003-08-20}:{today} t
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
  rev 17: julianfoad | 2003-08-15 02:17:06 +0100 (Fri, 15 Aug 2003)
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
  rev 32: julianfoad | 2003-09-23 22:53:14 +0100 (Tue, 23 Sep 2003)
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
  rev 33: julianfoad | 2003-09-23 22:54:51 +0100 (Tue, 23 Sep 2003)
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
  ~/tmp/svn-sandbox> svn log -q -r{2003-09-20}:{today} t
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
  rev 32: julianfoad | 2003-09-23 22:53:14 +0100 (Tue, 23 Sep 2003)
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
  rev 33: julianfoad | 2003-09-23 22:54:51 +0100 (Tue, 23 Sep 2003)
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is Badness. An "incremental" mode is required here, at least as an option, and perhaps as the default. This mode would list the changes that were made _between_ the two specified revisions (or dates), rather than _in and between_ them.

Alternatively we could make it more consistent (but not incremental) by evaluating the dates with respect to the specified item(s) rather than the whole repository.

3.

"svn log" crosses copy history by default; "--strict" disables this. "--strict" is far too vague a name, in the same way that "--force" is. How about "--ignore-ancestry"? That's based on my assumption that "--notice-ancestry" means to cross copy history, but I'm not sure if that is so. The only description I can find says "Pay attention to ancestry when calculating differences."

- Julian

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Received on Thu Oct 23 16:29:30 2003