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Re: Mnemomic names for revisions

From: Tim Hill <tim_at_realmsys.com>
Date: 2005-05-02 21:24:50 CEST

Yes, you can do some pre-commit "magic", but I think it's still somewhat
out-of-band. Don't get me wrong: the branch mechanism in SVN is
admirable, but overloading its use for labels is somewhat odd.

Would labels have to be a flat list? Why shouldn't I be able to label a
directory? At this point, a label looks an awful lot like a directory
property to me ("svn:label" ???). In fact, the only real change needed
in SVN itself would be to allow revision numbers to be specified using
labels, so, for example:

svn co URL -r !MYLABEL!

...would checkout the revision implied by the label (I made up the silly
syntax, substitiute as desired).

I can see several uses:
1. Eliminate need for "trivial" tags. Tags are good for major
milestones, where the visibility is a plus. But for every build?
2. Eliminate out-of-band data. If I equate SVN revisions to builds, then
tracking build numbers to revision numbers is of course trivial. But
many shops have build processes that are not so simple, and as a result
must track revision number to build number histories, creating YASLDF
(Yet Another Silly Little Data File). Far better to use labels and keep
everything within a single reference point -- SVN itself.

...and after all, we already have extensions to the "pure" revision
number model for dates, so why not labels?

--Tim

Johan Appelgren wrote:

>
><snip>
>
>Are aware that you can use a pre-commit hook to make the tags
>readonly? That would at least remove part of your problem with how you
>tag in subversion. And being able to put branches, tags and pretty
>much anything else in a clear hierarchy is in my eye less of a
>nightmare than having a huge flat list of labels. But then again, I'm
>probably missing something about how you envision labels to work :)
>
>/Johan
>
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Received on Mon May 2 21:33:13 2005

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