Re: current tree-conflicts branch status

On Wed, Jan 16, 2008 at 10:10:16PM +0100, Stefan Küng wrote:
>> I am not happy at all either with the current commit error message
>> of the CLI client. It should at least point the user where to get more
>> information. This applies to all conflicts.
>
> One think I don't quite understand: why is there such a limit in the svn
> client? Is this documented somewhere?

http://subversion.tigris.org/hacking.html#error-messages

>> On the other hand the current style assumes that users have read the book.
>
> But that's a wrong assumption. I can guarantee you that most users don't
> read the book.

Quite possibly.

>> This is a good thing, too. It means that users are expected to already know
>> what a conflict is and how to deal with it when they see the error message.
>
> You're expecting way too much from your users.

I'm not. I was just saying that the current style of error messages
seems to expect educated users. And I said that I would prefer the
error messages to be more user friendly, too.

> For example, I know what a conflict is - after all I'm using Subversion
> (TSVN) since the early days. But when I saw your examples on how tree
> conflicts are now handled, I was a little bit confused about what to do to
> resolve that conflict. Only when I saw the output from 'svn info' in your
> example I knew what to do. But without that, I had no idea - it wasn't the
> file itself that was in conflict but the tree.

Yes, if the file itself was in conflict it would be a text or property
conflict. Note that text and property conflicts can mix with tree
conflicts. If you run 'svn resolved' on a directory that has both
a property conflict and a tree conflict, both conflicts are resolved.

>>> I would even suggest to drop the limit of the error messages, and in the
>>> svn client then simply drop whatever comes after a newline. That way, the
>>> svn library doesn't have that limitation and only the svn client limits
>>> itself (and not all other clients too) to 50 chars and no newlines.

So you suggest that instead of printing the tree conflict descriptions
from "svn status", they get printed in the error message? Or maybe both?

>> I think it would help if clients consistently showed the same or at
>> least very similar error messages.
>
> Well, yes, that would be good. But limit all clients just because one
> client can't handle long messages and/or newlines?
> All I'm asking for is that you should not put the limit in the library but
> only where it applies: in the svn command line client.

See the hacker's guide link above. This issue needs to be discussed
seperately from tree conflicts IMO.

-- 
Stefan Sperling <stsp_at_elego.de>                 Software Developer
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http://www.elego.de                 Geschaeftsfuehrer: Olaf Wagner