Re: [TSVN] Branch dialogs

Michael Tiller wrote:
> I'm relatively new to Subversion. Overall, I welcome the greater
> flexibility and capabilities of Subversion compared to CVS. However, one
> thing I miss in CVS is the simplicity of identifying branches. In CVS, a
> branch was identified simply as an identifier. In Subversion, there is
> greater flexibility in how work with the repository, but this can be
> confusing to novices. Having them specifying URLs and requiring them to
> understand the branching philosophy for each repository can be a bit
> overwhelming for users. Since TortoiseSVN seems to have the goal of making
> version control as straightforward as possible (a very admirable goal I
> might add for those of us who are trying to convince people to use version
> control), I have a suggestion on how to address this.
>
> It seems to me that one way that TortoiseSVN could help address this would
> be to allow the repository administrators to encode how branches and tags
> were handled. Then this could be used to help simplify the process of
> identifying branches.
>
> Imagine the 'trunk' of your repository was
> http://hostname/path/to/repo/trunk and your branches and tags were stored at
> http://hostname/path/to/repo/branches/branchname and
> http://hostname/path/to/repo/tags/tagname respectively. It would be nice if
> the admin could associated properties with the repository like this:
>
> struct.trunk '/path/to/repo/trunk'
> struct.branch '/path/to/repo/branches/%s'
> struct.tag '/path/to/repo/tags/%s'
>
> (Of course, the names are arbitrary. I don't care what the property names
> are)
>
> The '%s' could then be replaced by a single identifier. Furthermore,
> TortoiseSVN could change the branch (switch, tag) dialogs when these
> properties are present on a repository so that the end-user only needs to
> provide a single identifier instead of a complete URL and then automatically
> constructs the appropriate URL using these properties. Note that I have
> included the full path but not the hostname and/or the proto. Even better
> would be struct.trunk = '/trunk', struct.branch = '/branches/%s', struct.tag
> = '/tags/%s' but I wasn't sure if that was possible.

Before we start looking at that route, have you found the repository
browser yet? This gives an explorer-like view of the repo structure so
you can see what naming conventions are already in use by a given
repository. Most places you need to use this sort of URL, like in the
branch/tag dialog, the browse button takes you straight into the repo
browser. Also, once you have browsed to an existing URL, you can copy
the URL and paste it somewhere else.

Simon

-- 
        ___
   oo  // \\      "De Chelonian Mobile"
  (_,\/ \_/ \     TortoiseSVN
    \ \_/_\_/>    The coolest Interface to (Sub)Version Control
    /_/   \_\     http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@tortoisesvn.tigris.org
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@tortoisesvn.tigris.org