Bug: Inherited properties give unexpected behavior

Hi! I'm using TortoiseSVN 1.8.8 build 25755 - 64Bit.

In the SVN Properties dialog for a single folder, I can see inherited properties in gray, and the extra column showing the path of inheritance. This is all fine, except there should be an (advanced?) option to show/hide inherited props (just like the --show-inherited-props option in the svn command line).

The unexpected/unwanted behavior appears when selecting an inherited property from the list, pressing Edit (Default) and then directly pressing OK inside the editor dialog. Voila, the inherited property value(s) become actual value(s)! This is unexpected as Edit followed by OK should not have side-effects.

If we instead press Edit (Advanced) and then OK, the property value is untouched, as it should be. However, inherited property values are visible in all editors which is misleading since there is no way (inside the editor dialog) to tell whether they are inherited or actual values.

I stumbled hard on this when I added an svn:externals property on a folder. When I pressed New (Externals) there was already an existing (so I thought) external definition which I did not touch, since I just wanted to add my new external. Some day later after merging this change to some other branches, I discovered that I had added not one but two new external values, since the "existing" value had not previously existed on that folder but was inherited down into the property New/Edit dialog.

The results of this confusion is perhaps most aggravating for the svn:externals property, but it is also rather confusing for "combined" properties like bugtraq:* and tsvn:* where the Default editor modifies multiple properties when pressing OK.

To fix this confusion, I would suggest that both property editors (Default and Advanced) by default show only actual values (like before in 1.7.x), and that a new button or checkbox is added to explicitly "insert/clone/inherit" the inherited value(s) (on demand).

Also, the above suggested option to hide/show inherited values would help remove unwanted clutter. It is not always desirable to see all inherited values, and for some properties like svn:externals the inheritance makes less sense...

Best regards,
Göran Wallgren

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Received on 2014-09-10 11:08:55 CEST