On 11/06/13 22:58, Mark Phippard wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 4:49 PM, Dirk <noisyb_at_pwnoogle.com> wrote:
>
>> after going "full retard" in IRC (it was good for me) I have calmed down
>> enough to give constructive criticism in regards of subversion and how it
>> handles symbolic links on Unix (and compat.) platforms.
>>
>> I wan't to start with a question. I am confident there is no answer to it.
>> At least not from people who share code between projects.
>>
>> * Why does subversion store symbolic links instead of following them? *
>>
>>
> Here is the original thread when the feature was added, I would assume this
> was discussed but I suppose it might have happened prior to the patch being
> submitted (did not read the entire thread):
>
> http://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2004-06/0986.shtml
>
>
Yes. That seems to be the patch that makes subversion store symbolic
links (and other special files) in the repository instead of following
them.
It doesn't make a lot of sense. These special files are platform
depending and there is no point in having them in /any/ repository. Even
if it is a project that is only for a single platform it doesn't make
sense storing special files in the repository. Symlinks, device files,
etc. are most likely worthless on another machine. It is customary to
create them during or at the end of a building process.
They translate poorly from one setup to another.
But that is how subversion behaves and how people know it to behave. So
I repeat asking for a /option/ in the configure script to make
subversion follow symlinks instead of storing these special files. I
don't want so rain into the svn:externals parade. But symlinks are just
more intuitive for people familar to Unix and it shows:
https://www.google.com/search?q=subversion+follow+symlinks
Thanks,
Dirk
Received on 2013-11-06 23:44:45 CET