Re: Custom keywords, issue #890

Vlad Skvortsov wrote:
> John Peacock wrote:
>> Honestly, I think that until a core developer (who may very well be
>> paid to do so) gets interested in developing the server-side config
>> piece, I don't see any hope for this to go much farther. That feature
>> is going to need a champion, and frankly, I'm not up for it...
>
> How complex do you expect the changes to be? I'm quite proficient in C
> but have not hacked any Subversion sources yet. And I would really like
> to have that feature implemented to put Subversion ahead of competition
> for *BSD projects.

The issue of server-side configuration is more one of design at this
point. There are several competing ideas, none of which seems to have
gotten off the ground in terms of serious analysis (other things always
seem more important).

My initial, back-of-the-envelope design went something like this:

1) custom keywords would be enabled by setting properties on a file (no
property set and that keyword is never updated again, which would aid in
importing sources from other *BSD) - I actually have code to make this
work already;

2) inherited properties would ease implementation of this (by setting an
inherited property at the root of a project it would be set
automatically for all files underneath it);

3) initial *client* code would enable certain directory properties to be
inherited by files in that directory only;

4) next level of *server* code would handle propagation of directory
properties down to the next directory (NOTE: this means that checking
out a leaf node of a large directory tree would require the server to
recurse up to determine whether any inheritable properties exist higher
in the tree, which in itself would pretty much require a server config
setting to enable this at all).

Inherited properties could also be handily used for custom commit forms
and other useful things. Search the message archives for mentions of
"iprops" and you should see much of the discussion of this scheme.

I believe Brane had a different vision for server distributed
configuration files for other purposes. He'll have to comment on that...

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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