Sparse Externals

Regarding this issue: http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3311

We don't support using --depth options other than infinity with
externals. Bert mentions that wc-ng should make it easier to
implement this.

However, given the way svn:externals can be defined I think that it's
really hard to implement this without a performance hit or without
having users frustrated by the way it works. In particular you can
define svn:externals at a different level than where you're putting
them. If we wanted this to work the way most people I think would
expect them to work you'd end up needing to walk all the way up to the
repo root looking for externals on every checkout/update. Which
stinks.

We could punt on that but I'm not sure I like the idea of just
continuing to apply hacks upon a poor design. So I'm wondering if it
wouldn't be better to just replace externals with something that
resolves a lot of other issues and gives us a more consistent
behavior. While leaving the existing externals implementation alone.

What does everyone else think? Anyone have put any thought into
replacing externals?
Received on 2012-10-18 23:31:06 CEST