Re: When to merge sparse-directories branch to trunk?

On Tue, 20 Feb 2007, Karl Fogel wrote:

> "Michael Brouwer" <mb.7766@gmail.com> writes:
> > The way it works is. You do a checkout with the -N flag, or you do a full
> > checkout and manually rm -rf any subtrees you are not interested in right now.
> >
> > svk update will never recreate a subdir (or file) you deleted this way. The
> > only way to get back a file or dir that is missing (or was never checked out)
> > is by using svk revert. By default revert will only give you the top level
> > object you are reverting. If you want a whole subtree add the -R switch.
> >
> > svk status shows you any missing files/subdirs with '!' unless you pass it the
> > -q switch in which case no '!" nor '?' files are shown.
> >
> > There's no mode in which you can have the missing directories as empty
> > subdirs, and then expand them, right? Oh, but you don't need that,
> > because you see them whenever you do 'svn st', they're prefixed with "!".
> > Hmmm. That's a bit scary -- it implies an error when there isn't one.
> > The user requested that things be this way, whereas "!" usually means
> > something is wrong. On the other hand, maybe that's an interface
> > detail that could be tweaked.
> >
> > In svk '!' simply means a file or directory which is under version control is
> > missing from your working copy. This is actually exactly what is happening
> > when you checkout a partial tree.
> >
> > Can you bring a subdir back in -N mode itself, though?
> >
> > Yes, svk revert subdir (without -R) will bring back just subdir itself.
>
> Thanks for the writeup, Michael.
>
> Hmmm. I feel like this sacrifices ease of use for ease of
> implementation. There's nothing wrong with that in principle
> (everything's a tradeoff), but it's pretty different from what we
> decided on for an interface, and we chose the interface based on what
> would be best for users while still implementable.
...

I'm quite partial to the 4 depth options Karl's been working on.