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Re: [PATCH] check name svn special properties

From: John Peacock <jpeacock_at_rowman.com>
Date: 2005-08-02 19:26:37 CEST

Julian Foad wrote:
> Are you aware that this checking is only for the "svn propset" command?

Yes.

> As far as I am aware, the wish for "server-resident project defaults" is
> only a wish, not a concrete proposal, so I have no idea whether it will
> even use properties.

It's one of of the features that I wish I had the time to devote myself
to fleshing out and coding. There are enough people who want it that I
think it will come about eventually. Personally, I think that it could
be neatly handled with inherited properties (another feature I want
added), but it could just as easily handled with a default file that the
server sends and the client adds to each admin directory. The latter
has the benefit that it automatically DTRT when the client is
disconnected (since it is a local file) and the server can throw an out
of date error if the client version is older than the server version.

> Much less can I see how it might conflict with
> this checking of their names, except to the extent that while
> configuring a project a user of an old client might occasionally need to
> set some new properties that are (presumably) solely for the benefit of
> newer clients.

Again, this is a larger design philosophy question. Any data validation
in the client code that might conceivably be useful for the server to
control becomes a special case for resolving conflicts.

> Anyway, this proposal does not add a list of property names to the
> client. The client already has the list of property names that it knows
> are legal today, and the only assumption it is going to make about other
> names is that they are either wrong or from the future, thus not likely
> to be set by hand very often. Therefore (so I keep asserting) it is
> acceptable to require a special effort from the user if he wants to set
> one that is unknown to the client.

AFAIK, the client contains the list of property names now only because
it needs to use them locally. It is not used as data validation
currently; the client gets the current list solely by having included
the appropriate .h file which is shared by client and server code.

My example specifically chose to limit the use of a current property to
make the point that the repository admin might want to require special
effort for even "normal" attributes. This wouldn't have any bearing on
the existing functionality that *uses* those properties. It would just
make the data validation something that could be modified without
installing a new client.

John

-- 
John Peacock
Director of Information Research and Technology
Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group
4501 Forbes Boulevard
Suite H
Lanham, MD  20706
301-459-3366 x.5010
fax 301-429-5748
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Received on Tue Aug 2 19:27:45 2005

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