Issue 525: allow working copies without text-base/

Hello all,

   A discussion at work raised the question of the size of WC's.

   I remember reading some discussion about optional text-bases
   a while ago and a quick search reveals issue 525. I might
   be interested in adding this feature (in a manner outlined
   below).

   Looking through the code, it appears that all access to the
   text-base files is through svn_wc__open_text_base() (and other
   related functions from libsvn_wc/adm_files.c).

   My idea for optional text bases is to do the following:

     1) Provide a global setting, or "svn co" switch which
        allows you to say "--without-text-base" or some such.
        Initially this setting would be global, but later it
        might be per-file, or by some policy (i.e. only text-base
        non-binary files).

     2) If the setting is active for a given file, don't create
        a text-base when checking out or updating.

     3) Modify svn_wc__*_text_base() to honour the setting created
        in (1) and, when there is no text base, retrieve it from
        the network instead of the local disc (maybe put it somewhere
        temporary).

   The obvious price paid for this is bandwidth. Network traffic would
   be massively increased for diff operations. Network traffic
   for commits would also be bad. However, it's a disc-space
   vs bandwidth tradeoff anyway, a setting like this allows the
   user to make the choice of which price they pay.

   Does the current commit code send deltas for changes to binary files?
   (I'm feeling too lazy to check this behaviour just now). If so, for
   users of big binary files, a commit becomes a baseline sized download
   followed by a diff sized upload, which could be a pretty hefty price.
   Otherwise, it's a full sized upload, with the delta calculated server
   side. What's the general policy on who does the work?

   Thoughts?

daniel

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Received on Thu Dec 2 11:47:19 2004