Re: symlinks cause 'svn add' to abort

"Marcel Molina Jr." <marcel@vernix.org> writes:

> not knowing all of the implications, i think, "it would be nice if it
> emitted the warning, skipped that file or directory (and everything
> beneath it if applicable) and kept going along".

And I tend to agree with you. Myself, sussman, and kfogel had a
conversion about a similar situation with 'svn add' that was causing
folks grief (where one of the targets expanded by '*' is already
versioned -- see Issue #939). It's an odd UI situation to be it. Say
I have a directory, versioned, with two unversioned things in it: a
file 'File', and a symlink 'Link'.

Now, keep in mind that Subversion never sees that '*' -- the shell
expands that into a list of arguments before handing it off to
Subversion.

So If I type 'svn add *', that's exactly the same as typing 'svn add
File Link'. Now, I'd like File to be added and Link to not cause a
fatal error (in case it gets hit first). But what should the returned
error code/state be? Clearly what I asked for wasn't accomplished in
full.

What about 'svn add Link'. Should that warn, or error? If warn, then
exactly what kinds of problem *should* cause errors?

> questions:
> * what are the reasons for having 'svn add' abort rather than skip?

Likely it was just an oversight.

> * is there a better way of dealing with this than the way i am dealing
> with it (assume that the response "yeah, get rid of the symlinks" is
> not an option in my case).

No.

> * if changing the behavior to skip rather than abort is on the menu, how
> high or low on the menu is it (if you know more or less, estimates are
> fun to have, if not particularly reliable)

If we treat this the same as issue #939, then it's under consideration
for the current 1.1 milestone, but might get dozed until 1.2.

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Received on Wed Jun 9 19:34:11 2004