Re: Retrieve pristine version of a replaced file via the svn api

On 13.06.2012 17:10, Julian Foad wrote:
> Branko Čibej wrote:
>
>> However, I shall now
>> demonstrate that Subversion already provides that functionality:
> This demo doesn't seem to include the replacement of a node, which is the case in question.

Well sure, It's not intended to; after all, their own tool obviously
doesn't handle replacements if it provides input for code review in a
format that ignores all tree-level changes. It doesn't take much effort
to run "svn status" first and look for /^R/.

One alternative in that case is to write a --diff-cmd compliant tool
that will record old and new file names to populate their
change-description file (along with building a tree of contents),
although you won't get keywors expanded in that case.

But that's all beside the point. Providing an API that locates pristine
files on disk is inherently wrong.

  * keyword expansion, eoln conversion, etc. have not been performed
  * the files may be compressed, or packed, or both
  * someday in the future, pristine files may not even exist

All of the above is solved by using "svn cat" to get the /contents/ of
the pristine file, which really is all they're interested in. And it
avoids having people mess about in the .svn directory.

-- Brane
Received on 2012-06-13 17:25:28 CEST