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Re: Tags

From: <hakon_at_ion.no>
Date: 2006-07-01 01:22:13 CEST

> On 6/30/06, hakon@ion.no <hakon@ion.no> wrote:
>
>> Note the similarity of this solution to the current Subversion-like
>> tags.
>> But instead of copying a TARGET@REVISION directory to a directory (named
>> TAG) in the tags directory, the REVISION is stored as the property value
>> of a property name TAG on the TARGET. And so it is easy to implement,
>> and
>> not too different from Subversion-like tags.
>
> OK, you're proposing that the 'tagname' be a piece of metadata
> attached to TARGET@REVISION, rather than making a cheap copy
> TARGET@REVISION.
>
> What's confusing here is that you're offering a solution to something,
> but nobody seems to understand what that something is. What's the
> problem you're trying to solve? Before you can propose technical
> solutions, you need to persuade us that there's a problem with
> subversion's current tagging system.

I want to simplify and enhance tagging in Subversion. I also would like to
make Subversion tagging feel more like other version control systems',
because I believe the current scheme is unnecessary difficult to use and
understand.

Here is my list of possible improvements to the Subversion's tagging scheme:

1. The user should not need to be bothered with _where_ the tag will be
stored.

2. The Subversion 'tag concept'* should be the same as other VCS', as the
Subversion concept does not add any value and confuses newcomers.

3. In line with (2), commands like 'svn up -r v1.0' should work as expected.

4. Subversion should 'know' of tags. E.g. look at what Subclipse have done
because Subclipse knew about the tags, and realise that Subversion should
support this natively. (Now the user had to locate the tags directory for
Subclipse.) In an earlier email I was telling about a possible 'svn
taglist' command that displays "TAG REVISION AUTHOR DATE" for all tags,
which is excactly the command-line version of one of the features of
Subclipse.

5. Subversion should get a 'tag' command to make the intention clear. (In
its simplest form, it could be another alias for 'copy'.)

6. Subversion should provide a more compact syntax for tagging. Say 'svn
tag -r REVISION TAG', or 'svn tag --force NEWREVISION' to update an
already set tag, or 'svn taglist' for displaying tags.

*) The Subversion concept of a tag is that it is a directory (in HEAD).
While other VCS uses a concept of tags which is a revision number (or a
path and a revision number).

The proposed solution of putting tags as special properties solves all of
them.

Håkon Hallingstad

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Received on Sat Jul 1 02:21:40 2006

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