Your question:
My proposed change to the "format" file isn't needed by your use case. However, your use case isn't the one I raised. If I failed to describe that, I apologize. In fact this part of my proposal (format changes) isn't strictly needed by my use case (more later).
My contrived use case:
I am interested in a 2nd party recieving an svn repo in 5+ years. For some reason (perhaps legitimate), no one knows the proper rev(s) of svn tools to use with it. (Also, consider 10+ years.)
After testing the latest release, the 2nd party realizes the tools and the schema are incompatible and he or she reads the release notes which indicate when the schema changes (not what it changed to). Using the current information, the 2nd party would need to perform a linear search through the schema levels (trying chosen versions of the tools) until they found a compatible svnadmin.
Given this, would adding the schema level to the schema change notices in the release notes/changes file be appropriate and/or acceptable?
As for my other suggestion (format), it isn't strictly needed. It does provide similar information as above in a self documenting manner. It also couples that information with the svn db itself and not with the tools used to maintain it. I believe this has +value. I won't argue how much.
Judd
>
> From: Ben Collins-Sussman <sussman@collab.net>
> Date: 2004/02/11 Wed PM 06:09:56 GMT
> To: judd.jenne@charter.net
> CC: users@subversion.tigris.org
> Subject: Re: Re: DB format vs svn versions
>
> On Wed, 2004-02-11 at 11:42, judd.jenne@charter.net wrote:
>
> > I am willing to propose patches for 2 things:
> > 1. Enhancing the "format" file to include descriptive text indicating what tools created it.
>
> This is an unnecessary code change. I still maintain that you're fixing
> a problem that doesn't exist, nor will ever exist.
>
> Let me pose a question to you: suppose somebody is using Subversion for
> years, and then one day they decide to upgrade to the latest release.
> They look in their repository's 'format' file and see a number N. How
> would their lives be *any* easier if the file instead said "schema N,
> first established by subversion release X"?
>
> In either scenario, the users still needs to find out whether a
> schema-upgrade is required at all. This is done by reading the CHANGES
> file, or release announcements, asking around, or by a rude awakening
> (the latest subversion complains about the wrong db schema.)
>
> If it turns out that schema-upgrade is required, then the user simply
> needs to use their current 'svnadmin' binary to dump their data. After
> upgrading to the latest release, they use the new 'svnadmin' to load the
> data.
>
> So, please, can you explain what problem you're solving? How will
> things be any easier?
>
>
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Received on Wed Feb 11 20:54:18 2004