On Apr 28, 2006, at 21:26, Gale, David wrote:
> Incidentally, this brings up a question I've often wondered: why
> doesn't
> subversion have a "client-only" install? Surely there's no need
> for the
> majority of svn installations to include svnadmin and svnserve, right?
> What I'd love to see is a "--client-only" option to configure, which
> disables all optional items (unless they're explicitly turned on), and
> which only creates the svn tool. Thus:
>
> ./configure # Creates all tools, with all available extras as
> current.
> ./configure --client-only # Creates just svn, no extras.
> ./configure --client-only -with-ssl # Creates just svn with ssl
> support.
>
> And so on. Any thoughts on this?
As far as I understand, because the Subversion client can also access
Subversion repository files directly (over the file:/// protocol,
without going through a Subversion server process), the client can do
all the same things as a server, and therefore has all the same
dependencies as the server. So we're only talking about saving the
disk space and compilation time for svnserve.
Since Subversion can work without a server process, a user wanting
such a setup might reasonably expect to be able to get everything
done that they wanted to get done by using this hypothetical client-
only option. If so, they would also need svnadmin to be able to
create a repository and svnlook and svndumpfilter to manipulate it.
Any client, even those accessing a remote repository, would benefit
from having the svnversion command available.
The Subversion libraries are of course needed for the client as much
as for the server.
Don't underestimate the support implications. This is a very busy
mailing list. A lot of people use Subversion, among them a lot of
people who don't know how to, divided between those who have never
used a revision control system before, and those who have used a
different revision control system before (not sure which is worse).
Considering this, the team needs to make Subversion as easy to use as
possible. If they offered this client-only option, using it when its
use is warranted would merely save a small amount of time at
installation time (taking less and less time as computers get faster)
and a little bit of fixed disk space (Subversion philosophy is that
disk is cheap). Using the option when its use is unwarranted will
result in the user not installing components they need, which could
incur user frustration and an email to this list, which someone will
then have to answer.
This list is not exactly tech support as such, but it's similar
enough. And in tech support, you try to determine your "issue
drivers": why your users needed to ask for support, and look for ways
to help the next user do it right without having to call you. By not
providing a client-only option, Subversion removes one way in which
the user could screw up, and is therefore IMHO a good thing.
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Received on Fri Apr 28 22:54:40 2006