From: David F. Newman [mailto:dnewman@epnet.com]
Sent: 24 September 2004 16:21
>
> On Fri, 2004-09-24 at 10:55, Brad Appleton wrote:
> >
> > A similar idea would be allowing a symbolically-named "alias"
> > for a global revision number. It would just be a mapping
> > (without creating a copy for each one -- however cheap it may be)
> > that would "macro-expand" into the corresponding revnum.
> >
>
> If a copy of a file in subversion is equivalent to a hard link in unix,
> then ultimately the only thing being added to the repository is the text
> representing the new URL. In my mind that is equivalent to a tag in
> CVS, just some extra text attached to a file. Albeit, much longer text,
> but that is why I store my URLs in short environment variables, such as
> ${M}
>
Personally I think some sort of alias/tag should be supported directly by
SVN
rather than having to be maintained outside of it (with environment
variables
or whatever). And it should be just that, an alias. Not a copy. You
shouldn't
have to go to the lengths of doing special pre-commits to make it a special
copy that can't be changed.
Also, coming fresh to a brand new repository, if I do 'svn ls' all these
copies show up. It is only because I understand what is going on that I
realise that the stuff in /tags/ are actually just placeholder copies being
used to avoid having to remember revision numbers or search log messages.
The point, I think, is that something like an alias/tag property of a
revision
is something that should be provided by the tool. Not something that should
be
layered on as a configuration issue. (so no, custom properties do not
satisfy
things). If this has to be maintained by having a file in the repository
somewhere that maps revision numbers to mnemonics then so be it. There is
already 'HEAD' so why not give other revisions names ('START' for a branch
would be nice maybe?).
These sort of things are incredibly useful (necessary even) for scripting
commonly performed operations (such as repeated branch propagations).
Sean.
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Received on Fri Sep 24 17:34:08 2004