RE: RE: Re: how to check in a symlink?

Short of changing the client side filesystem, the Continuus solution
strikes me as a reasonable compromise that Subversion might want to
adopt.

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen Warren [mailto:swarren@paramanet.com]
Sent: April 5, 2004 10:56 AM
To: Jason Voegele; users@subversion.tigris.org
Subject: RE: Re: how to check in a symlink?

> From: Jason Voegele [mailto:jason@jvoegele.com]
>
> On Monday 05 April 2004 10:19 am, Derek Mahar wrote:
> > 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.
> [snip]
> > Maybe Subversion should try to emulate the ClearCase model.
>
> Yikes. Talk about a heavy-handed solution to supporting symlinks...

Well, Clearcase doesn't do this *just* to support sym-links...

Clearcase's model is that it exports your work-area/... as a filesystem
that you map. And then, because of that, they are then free to implement
sym/hard-links very easily... (as well as do a whole bunch of other
interesting things!)

As another reference point, Continuus (CCM, CM Synergy, ...) support
symlinks in its 'database' (repository) *but* only when your work-area
is stored on a filesystem that supports it (i.e. Unix). If you're
running on Windows, the symlink object simply doesn't appear in your
filesystem (you get a warning upon 'reconfigure' - the equivalent of
'update')

The idea is that if you're running all Unix and want symlinks, you can
use them. If you're running clients on Windows, the filesystem doesn't
support them anyway, so you probably weren't going to attempt to use
them, so you won't miss having them.

Personally, I think this is a very pragmatic solution...

But, to get symlinks on Windows, if/when SVN supports links, you could
simply run your SVN client on a Unix system, and export the Unix
filesystem containing your working-copy via Samba, then map a drive on
the Windows system. Windows apps will be able to read the symlink, which
will correctly map to the target of the link, but of course still won't
be able to manipulate the link itself (i.e. create new links or point
existing links at a new place) (Perhaps links could work similarly via
WebFolders attached to a WebDAV server to)

--
Stephen Warren, Software Engineer, Parama Networks, San Jose, CA
http://www.wwwdotorg.org/work_contact/
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