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Re: Reality check

From: Roy Franz <roy.lists_at_gmail.com>
Date: 2007-12-18 21:14:44 CET

On Dec 18, 2007 11:38 AM, Steven Bakke <steven.bakke@amd.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Dec 18, 2007, at 12:47 PM, Roy Franz wrote:
>
> > On Dec 18, 2007 5:05 AM, Ben Collins-Sussman <sussman@red-bean.com>
> > wrote:
> >> On Dec 17, 2007 9:37 PM, Roy Franz <roy.lists@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> I personally think that some of these basic usability issues are
> >>> much
> >>> more important than offline operation, etc.
> >>
> >> The only reason you can answer the question "which tags contain this
> >> file?" so easily in CVS is because tags are based on labeling files.
> >> The underlying RCS file has the list of tag-labels right there, ready
> >> to go. The tradeoff, of course, is that creating tags becomes an
> >> O(N)
> >> operation -- I've seen companies sit and wait for *hours* to make a
> >> tag on big trees in CVS or Clearcase. So the new design isn't
> >> always
> >> a "very visibile regression in usability", but is more like a game of
> >> whack-a-mole. Make one thing easier, something else gets
> >> harder. :-)
> >> Though, maybe with a careful redesign, it's possible to whack both
> >> moles at once...
> >>
> >> You might want to read this, as it directly talks about your problem:
> >>
> >> http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/notes/schema-tradeoffs.txt
> >>
> >
> > I understand the tradeoffs and the underlying implementation, so I
> > realize that this is
> > not an easy problem to address. I guess I am a little frustrated that
> > there doesn't seem to be any interest
> > in addressing it (or even agreeing that it is a problem.) In our
>
> I'll second that. I think one issue is getting acknowledgement that
> "tags as labels" are
> a valid use-case which is only partially addressed by "tags as cheap
> copies". It
> is not really a replacement. Based upon the number of times this
> issue has come
> up in the users mailing list, there seems to be demand for this
> capability.
>
>
> > organization, a small number of people make the tags, but almost
> > everybody is interested
> > in asking the 'hard questions' (hard for SVN, easy for CVS) about
> > tags. This leads to an overall not-so-positive feeling about
> > Subversion,
> > as most people see the regressions, while only a few see the gains. I
> > am surprised that more organizations don't run into the same problem.
> > This probably isn't a 'sexy' feature (like merge tracking,
> > disconnected/distributed, etc.), but is a significant usability wart.
> >
> > Roy
>
>
>
>

I don't know if tags-as-labels implies other capabilities, but most of
what I am looking for
is for svn log to (optionally) show the tags that have been 'applied'
to a specific revision of a file.
The other interesting question is for a file/tag pair, which revisions
of the file are equivalent to the tagged version.

If I make a branch from trunk, then tag it, if file 'a' hasn't changed
on the branch then I would want the 'svn log' output
on trunk to indicate the version on trunk that is equivalent to the
tagged version. (It won't be the same path that was tagged, but will
have the same contents.)

I see this as a meta-data lookup problem, so I don't care if the
underlying revision storage is changed or not. Having this
information cached (and the cache updated after the commit) is
perfectly fine, and I think balances the O(1) commit performance.

Roy

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Received on Tue Dec 18 21:14:56 2007

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