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RE: Re: how to check in a symlink?

From: Derek Mahar <DMahar_at_penson.ca>
Date: 2004-04-05 16:19:46 CEST

If I remember correctly, ClearCase supports symbolic links on both
Windows and Unix-like systems. Ironically, unlike Subversion, ClearCase
completely subverts the underlying client filesytem and installs its
own. On Windows, to create a view (similar in concept to a working
copy) of a Versioned Object Base (VOB), you must map a drive to the
view, so unlike on Unix, the Windows ClearCase client does not allow a
user to create a view rooted at any directory in the filesystem.
However, the ClearCase client filesystem does support both symbol and
hard links. Maybe Subversion should try to emulate the ClearCase model.

Derek

-----Original Message-----
From: Travis P [mailto:svn@castle.fastmail.fm]
Sent: April 4, 2004 12:07 PM
To: Brian W. Fitzpatrick
Cc: Subversion users mailing list; Max Bowsher; Robert P. J. Day
Subject: Re: how to check in a symlink?

On Apr 4, 2004, at 10:46 AM, Brian W. Fitzpatrick wrote:

> On Sun, 2004-04-04 at 10:41, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>> On Sun, 4 Apr 2004, Travis P wrote:
>>> That's unfortunate, that's a feature that would be really useful.
>>
>> uh ... yeah, since that's a common complaint about CVS. i'm curious
>> --
>> how difficult is this? admittedly, i haven't thought about it very
>> hard,
>> but does supporting symlinks really represent a level of complexity
>> that
>> requires an actual "plan"?
>
> Absolutely. The world that Subversion lives in is made up of many
> different operating systems, and symlinks aren't the same thing on all

> of them.

On Apr 4, 2004, at 10:47 AM, Erik Huelsmann wrote:

> Since the concept would have to be portable over several different
> OSes, I
> guess some thorough work needs to be done in order to get it "just
> right". One
> of the problems would be: what would a working copy with symlinks in
> them
> look like on Windows?

With deference to Erik and Brian's comments (and now John's), my
perception is also that it is a common CVS complaint and one that I
definitely hoped Subversion would alleviate (and maybe someday it will,
but the prognosis indicates it won't be soon).

Re: the cross-platform issue
Do any other VC systems attempt to handle the challenge?

Re: workarounds
My current idea for a workaround is to put .symlinks file in
directories that need them with content like:
   #!/bin/sh
   ln -sf execWrapper.pl wrappedprog
and then have a wrapper that kicks off a 'find' to find and execute
them on checkouts/updates. It would be nice to kick it off in the
background since I wouldn't necessarily want to wait for it most of the
time. But then, in cases where I need the links to be in place, I
wouldn't know when it was finished. Maybe I'll just require the
execution of an update-symlinks command (that would be same type of
'find' idea, but could be foreground or background and re-executed
whenever desired).

I've rejected the idea of using properties because that won't work with
export.

Anybody already tackle this and have any advice to share?

-Travis

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Received on Mon Apr 5 16:20:34 2004

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