Re: svn commit: rev 7963 - trunk/subversion/libsvn_wc

Eric Gillespie <epg@pretzelnet.org> writes:

> I was going for the minimal impact to address my problem.

Why? Are we that near 1.0?

> Really, i don't think we should have empty-file to begin with.
> On UNIX we have /dev/null and on Windows they have NUL or
> whatever.

I added the empty file before we had SVN_NULL_DEVICE_NAME. I wasn't
aware that Windows had a NUL device and nobody suggested that such a
thing was available.

> Subversion is really an inode hog, and i'm not sure what all it
> buys us. A README in every admin dir? Give me a break. Lots of

The README file is probably redundant. Originally, it was used to
confirm that the admin directory was complete, but the format file
performs that function now.

> that stuff could be shared by putting it only in the top level of
> the wc (like empty-file, if we really do need it).
>
>> It would be better to create the file using the default
>> permissions and then use the set read-only function to remove
>> write access.
>
> Add a whole 'nother system call? For what? Why on earth do we
> think this file has to be read-only?

It's the way all the other files in the admin directory behave.

> I can imagine some
> responses (though not necessarily from you), and they are not
> impressive.

If the empty file erroneously gets some content then Subversion may
well produce the wrong output.

How about this: drop both the empty file and the README file, and
start using SVN_NULL_DEVICE_NAME in place of the empty file. I think
we would have to bump SVN_WC__VERSION and have maybe_upgrade_format()
convert old working copies to the new format. (If this caused us to
stop supporting working copies that don't have a format file I would
not be concerned.)

-- 
Philip Martin
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