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Re: Merge 'svnmover' demo tool to trunk

From: Julian Foad <julianfoad_at_apache.org>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 10:44:50 +0000

Johan Corveleyn wrote:
> Julian Foad wrote:
>> The work on the 'move-tracking-2' branch currently consists of some
>> library functions (mostly named 'svn_branch_*') which are used only by
>> the demo tool named 'svnmover'. These do not interfere with normal
>> Subversion operation at all. I propose to merge this to trunk to lower
>> the barrier to participation in this work.
>>
>> I first need to review a few places where I touched existing code to
>> insert 'shims'; only a small part of this would remain, I think, as
>> bidirectional shims are not currently available.
>>
>> Any objections?
>
> No concrete objections.
>
> But it makes me wonder: what is the big plan for svnmover and its
> concepts, both on the short term (1.10) and the longer term?
>
> Do you intend to release it as an experimental demo tool in 1.10, to
> give it more visibility and to be able to get feedback from users? In
> that case, will we be able to avoid confusion (people might think it's
> a core tool, a next generation ui, the real thing, ...)?
>
> But the bigger question is the long term question: what's the eventual
> goal for this? Do you aim for a parallel world, or a complete
> reimplementation of certain concepts (in that case, perhaps this is
> 2.0-ish)? Or do you want to integrate certain ideas, elements, ui, ...
> into the core? And in doing so, add new plumbing for your model, as an
> "enrichment" of the existing model; or build on the existing plumbing
> to support certain higher level concepts, ....?
>
> If this is to be integrated into trunk, and thus in some form released
> in 1.10, I'd like to know where we're going with this.

Excellent questions, Johan. Thanks for asking them.

The Big Plan is a thing that we -- you and the others and me -- need
to work out together. I don't know if that will be seamlessly merging
new models into the existing Subversion framework, or starting off by
building a completely new and incompatible system, or some approach in
between those extremes.

'svnmover' is a program for helping developers to understand and try
out some concepts that I think are helpful. It is not intended to be
useful for end-users, and I hadn't even thought about releasing it. As
such, maybe it shouldn't appear as a top-level executable but
somewhere else, perhaps in 'tools' or 'contrib'.

I want to bring this to trunk because I can't do this on my own. I
think it's the number one most important thing that Subversion needs,
and so I passionately want to make it work in some way. I have done a
big batch of solo thinking and scratched hundreds of sketches on scrap
paper, which was productive and resulted in what I think are some good
ideas, but there are still some big gaps in how to fit them together
into a real Subversion.

The phase we're at is the phase of sharing new concepts and interest
and ideas among ourselves, and I hope to be able to convince you that
although a big and difficult project, it is worth our while and we can
do it.

- Julian
Received on 2015-11-12 11:45:13 CET

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