Re: reposurgeon now writes Subversion repositories

On 30.11.2012 22:53, Eric S. Raymond wrote:

> The problem is that in order for that state to be mobile, none of it
> can have pointers to data that can't move off the host server. In
> particular, *all user identities have to be Internet-scoped* rather
> than local Unix IDs.

At this point I have to ask if you've been reading our responses.

Nothing requires svn:author to contain Unix user IDs. Nothing prevents
the server from putting e-mail addresses, or even "Name Surname
<e_at_mail>" strings into svn:author. We specifically designed the property
so that the server /can/ do this, and there are several widely-used
mechanisms for doing exactly that, regardless of access method;
http[s]://, svn+ssh://, svn:// (with or without SASL) all give the
administrator the hooks to do this.

When I create an account at [your favourite forge], I tell it my name
and give it one of my e-mail addresses. It is, in my opinion, up to the
forge software to use that in svn:author, not up to local user
preferences. That /is/ a fundamental difference between the centralised
and distributed models.

Why do forges not do that? I don't know, but it's definitely not because
Subversion doesn't give them fifteen ways of manipulating the svn:author
property.

Now that's not saying I'm categorically against letting the user set
some revision property automatically on commit. But the problem of
svn:author you're describing is simply what you assert it to be.

-- Brane

-- 
Branko Čibej
Director of Subversion | WANdisco | www.wandisco.com