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Re: Auto-selection of merge source URL

From: Michael Sinz <Michael.Sinz_at_sinz.org>
Date: 2007-12-03 17:20:44 CET

On Dec 1, 2007 7:39 PM, Daniel Rall <dlr@collab.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 30 Nov 2007, C. Michael Pilato wrote:
>
> > Here again, though:
> >
> > $ svn merge -c -SOME_REV
> >
> > Oh! Shoot! Better undo that:
> >
> > $ svn merge -c SOME_REV
> >
> > Uh...
>
> In this model, where forward and reverse merges have different behavior,
> the second 'svn merge' to do a rollback is inappropriate. If you hadn't
> performed a commit of the previous merge, you'd use 'svn revert'.

A revert would revert everything - the merges we do many times have
multiple parts to them... But then that rarely is within the same
URL/branch.

> If you
> had performed a commit which, say, created NEW_REV, you'd do:
>
> $ svn merge -c -NEW_REV
>
> ...which would rollback the reverse merge and mergeinfo changes of SOME_REV
> from the WC's branch.

Ahh, but again, that does the whole thing - if I really only wanted to
undo the single r2344 that I undid by accident the time before it does
not work orthogonally.

> Alternately, you could use:
>
> $ svn merge -c SOME_REV SOME_REV_SOURCE_URL
>
> While I agree with Mike that the UI offers some potential for confusion,
> this model would be at least deterministic, meaning the users who don't
> read the documentation (read: everyone) would at least be able to learn the
> sub-command flavor's behavior. This is a reasonable trade-off because it
> better matches the typical user usage model.

While I agree that it is deterministic, the UI is non-orthogonal and
that tends to be confusing for users (and me) and very annoying for
dynamic scripts (well, you never use the shortcut and you never get
bit...)

And as someone who gets asked to help support Subversion users I know
that if the behavior is non-orthogonal that I will, most likely, never
even mention the shortcut.

PS - Plus, so many other commands assume the self-URL - svn ls, svn
diff, etc. It would make merge really stand out.

(I agree it would be nice to address the default merge source URL but
how to best do this has yet to hit me between the eyes...)

-- 
Michael Sinz               Technology and Engineering Director/Consultant
"Starting Startups"                          mailto:Michael.Sinz@sinz.org
My place on the web                      http://www.sinz.org/Michael.Sinz
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Received on Mon Dec 3 17:21:05 2007

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