Hi Stefan
Thanks for the quick off the mark reply as always, and I do have a
suggestion for how this can be done with no improvements to SVN.
>> I think that Peter and Nicholas are correct here. Firstly, the
>> documentation is definitely the place to go as it explains the basics
>> very
>> well, and not much needs to be read. However I have to agree with
>> Nicholas too as far as creating repositories is concerned, as whilst
>> it's
>> easy, it's also a an effort and time consuming when it should be a 5
>> second job and not a 5 minute on.
>
> 5 minutes to create a new repository???
Even though as acknowleged it takes only a few moments to do, from start
to finish it could do easily take several minutes because it's not a one
step operation, and not one that the average user does day to day. They
therefore do not become familiar with the task, and are likely to forget.
> If you don't know where you've stored your repositories, I recommend
> writing it down.
>
> This whole process could be as simple as writing a note with all the
> information you need:
> * location of the server (room XY in building Z)
> * map on how to get there
> * 'svnadmin create path/to/new/repository' to create new repository
> * svn mkdir /url/to/just/created/repo/trunk
> * svn mkdir /url/to/just/created/repo/branches
> * svn mkdir /url/to/just/created/repo/tags
> * send mail with url of created repo to the devs
This was acknowledged, as well as that the task could also be scripted.
However the Dev must then remember where to find the crib, and the first
part of those 5 minutes will be spent on the Dev trying to locate it.
Whilst further procedures can help to minimise that such as writing on
whiteboards, post-it notes and so on, this would get lost over time and by
the time a dev does need to create a new repository we would be back at
square one. So, for those that can remember because they do it all the
time it's undeniably easy and they can't be blamed for not recognising
that a problem exists with this aspect of SVN/Tortoise, but for the
average user it's probably not easy and there is a weakness in SVN, and by
association Tortoise, in this aspect.
>> Now none of this may actually be a fault in Tortoise though as I'm not
>> sure whether even SVN itself can support remote repository creation,
>
> No, it can't. And that's for security reasons.
There need not be any security risk, particularly if the server is setup
with adequate security protections in place. The convenience and upside of
making it easy to create remote repositories, which could always be
required to be explicitly enabled "at the users own risk", justifies its
existance, but this isn't a Tortoise concern.
What could be done is to add support for Tortoise executing the relevant
commands via ssh itself. The few parameters that are required, such as
host name, user name and default repository directory can be setup and
remembered. A password would be prompted for if not stored, and everything
would be known for Tortoise to login, run the svnadmin command and create
the standard directory setup. Sure a user could do this themselves via
ssh, but they shouldn't have to. As well as fairly simple to add, this
would be phenominal as whilst it's a rarely used operation, the upside
would be that the dev need not have to remember anything in order to
complete the operation and it would then take just a few seconds.
> Good luck with that. My vote doesn't count with the Subversion devs.
Which is a shame as there is mutual benefit to be had from cooperation and
collaboration between both projects, as well as input from real-world end
users in terms of what is required and not just what devs think is
required.
Thanks again for the reply and your work. As Tortoise can only expose what
is available via the SVN api you are naturally constrained by the SVN,
however the suggestion of Tortoise synthesising such an operation itself
would be a way forward in this case. It need not carry any security risks,
and whilst you might not believe this or recognise the benefits yourself,
it actually *would* be fantastic.
Nick
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Received on Sun Dec 17 16:04:09 2006