svn commit --non-recursive dir_path gives error "Cannot non-recursively commit a directory deletion"

I have a wrapper script (wraps the command line client and doesn't
use language bindigns) that I use for certain operations because I
want to ensure that the commit only happens on the passes paths and
doesn't recursively process directories. The script, at a high level,
does

At a high level, the script writes the paths to a temp file, and runs

svn commit --non-recursive --targets temp_file

Suppose one path is a directory that has had a propchange (and I want
that propchange to be committed, but not other pending changes in
that directory's children). --non-recursive is necessary here.

Suppose another path is a directory that has been deleted - --non-
recursive errors out here. (These changes ought to be part of the
same change set. Using the language bindings isn't really an option
here - it adds all sorts of complexity to a simple wrapper.)

So to my question...

Is there any reason why

svn commit --non-recursive dir_path

generates that error? One the one hand, I can see the software saying
that I asked it to do something that didn't make sense, or that it
couldn't do. OTOH, in my usage pattern it is necessary to pass this
flag, and I can't see that anything else would be expected. It is
impossible to remove a directory node without removing its children
and (ignoring implementation details) it doesn't feel like a
recursive operation anyway - just feels like cutting a single node
out of the tree.

Would it be possible to patch the software (I can investigate writing
the patch, but I am not an expert on the svn source) such that

svn commit dir_path

and

svn commit --non-recursive dir_path

simply do the same thing without erroring out?

Thanks,
Jim

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Received on Sun Jul 24 17:08:30 2005