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Re: FEATURE REQUEST: svnadmin to accept URL notation file:///

From: Josh Gilkerson <jwg_at_google.com>
Date: 2007-04-27 02:13:24 CEST

On 4/26/07, Peter Samuelson <peter@p12n.org> wrote:
>
> [Josh Gilkerson]
> > Isn't this a bug? I (and probably most others) would assume that a
> > valid path wouldn't be refused because it looks like a url. Couldn't
> > svnadmin check to see if 'file:/test' exists and is a directory
> > before giving the "is a URL" error?
>
> In essence, you are saying that _all_ of the svn subcommands (cp, rm,
> diff, etc.) that accept either a path or a URL are buggy.

I didn't really mean to imply that "I think this is a bug," I was just
wondering if it had been considered, or if the current method was
simply used because noone thought about a path specified this way.

Actually, the other commands are a separate issue. svnadmin
explicitly takes a path, not a url, so the current implementation
assumes that the user doesn't know what they are doing. We're saying
"Give me a toy", they give us a toy shovel, we say "That's not a toy,
that's a tool" and toss it away. We're right, it is a tool, but it's
also a toy and since we asked for a toy we should take it and shut up.
 With the other svn commands, we say "Give me a tool or a toy" and we
choose to use our toy shovel as a tool because that's what we think it
looks like.

> I'd file this bug under "Well, Don't Do That Then". There is no need
> to create paths that resemble URLs, and if you're going to do it,
> there's no need to refer to them with multiple / characters in a row.

I agree completely, but someone might want to or it might be a
scripted process that creates a repository and isn't real intelligent
about how it creates paths.

> Adding a flag to disambiguate between 'svn cp URL URL' or 'svn cp PATH
> PATH' would annoy me and, I suspect, almost everyone else.

I definitely don't think a switch should be mandatory, but it might be
nice (especially for scripts) to add a switch that says 'hey, this
next thing is a url' or 'hey, this next thing is a file' and have svn
treat it that way even when it looks like it isn't.

-- 
Josh Gilkerson
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Received on Fri Apr 27 02:14:30 2007

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