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Re: I miss tags

From: Mark Phippard <MarkP_at_softlanding.com>
Date: 2004-09-23 20:16:31 CEST

"Raye Raskin" <rayer@pobox.com> wrote on 09/23/2004 02:07:50 PM:

> In svn, there ain't no static tag, except by convention. This is
> a bad idea, IMHO.

The problem is that you are basing this on the way a completely different
product works. CVS does not have a global revision number so it needed a
convention like that. Except, as you point out, it could still be
changed. SVN is better. The global revision number is an absolute, it
always exists and cannot be changed. Why not let the tags be flexible? If
you do not want them updated, don't allow them to be updated. It isn't
that hard.

> Proposal (my flame suit is on):
>
> Make ./trunk, ./branches, and ./tags REQUIRED subdirectories, not
> just "best practices". [Is it too late for this?!!!]

SVN is a "filesystem". These are just conventions and should remain so.
Nothing should be forced on users. People use Subversion for lots of
different reasons, we do not need to force a structure on them that is
artificial and limiting.

> Doing the above would also make is possible to simplify the syntax
> of some svn commands to refer to "-r LABEL" (i.e., branch or tag
> name, rather than having to spell out the entire URL) and have svn
> do the looking for you. This would improve usability.

See, now this is the real issue. It is a legitimate request and has been
mentioned before. Someone just needs to come up with a clever way to
implement it. I suspect that the first thing we need is the idea of
central configuration properties that are hosted in the repository. Once
this problem is solved, it should be possible to build on top of that. For
example, perhaps you could define aliases that refer to URL's and then use
those aliases in the commands.

> Of course, svn already offers "revision number" which identifies a
> static, unchanging version of the repository. But, at least in cvs,
> it was always deemed best to avoid dealing with absolute revision
> numbers and "let cvs deal with them internally".

Don't let the deficiencies of another version control system influence
your thinking about SVN. The global revision number is hugely powerful
and should not be discounted just because other tools do not have a
similar concept.

Mark

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Received on Thu Sep 23 20:17:02 2004

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