Re: Eric goes to lunch -- a decentralized-development user story

Benjamin Pflugmann <benjamin-svn-dev@pflugmann.de>:
> Well, having had some days to let sink it in, I think the local-repo
> option has a more realistic chance to become implemented, as any
> change to libsvn_wc (and my suggestion would need those), will have a
> hard time to be accepted.
>
> > I'm listening and my mind is open, however.
>
> Well, since both our ideas would benefit from a specification of
> history diffs, we could take a step back and start with creating some
> fundament.

I went off and did some research. Among other things, I ran my eyeballs
over some dump files. I've learned that dump files don't normally contain diffs
at all -- when a node is changed in a revision, the revision contains
an entire copy of that node. (Of course the Subversion designers already
knew this.)

This isn't good for a history-diff format; simething like unified or
context diffs is better. The reason? Checking the context match can
help you spot clashes between what the diff expects and the actual state
of the code.

Accordingly, I'm reversing my previous contention. Dump files and history
diffs are *not* the same.

I'm now back to thinking that what we need is an action-diff format with
the following possible actions:

1. Apply diff
2. Add file
3. Delete file
4. Rename file
5. Set/clear property

and

6. Commit.

The "Commit" action would commit all diffs since the last commit action,
and could have a log message attached to it. Note: commits should be
timestamped and have a committer ID string (presumably a fully-qualified
developer@site.domain address) attached to them

-- 
		Eric S. Raymond
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