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Re: Why doesn't svn use /tmp for temporary files ?

From: Garrett Rooney <rooneg_at_electricjellyfish.net>
Date: 2006-05-12 20:05:40 CEST

On 5/12/06, Michael Haggerty <mhagger@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> Garrett Rooney wrote:
> > On 5/11/06, subversion.mexon@spamgourmet.com
> > <subversion.mexon@spamgourmet.com> wrote:
> >> So why doesn't Subversion behave like CVS, and indeed every other unix
> >> program, and use /tmp for temporary files? It seemed pretty
> >> counterintuitive.
> >
> > Subversion often atomically copies temporary files into place, so that
> > you either see all of a file or none of it. This doesn't work if
> > you're copying between two filesystems, and since /tmp is often on a
> > different filesystem than your working copy, that would be a problem.
>
> Your argument might be convincing for many types of temporary files, but
> I don't see how it applies to svn-commit.tmp.
>
> The main advantages of /tmp are (1) the files are not cluttering up the
> WC and daring svn to commit them; (2) /tmp is typically cleaned up
> periodically to remove ancient detritus. These benefits would accrue
> not only to the svn-commit.tmp files (which svn tries to clean up), but
> also editor backup files like svn-commit.tmp~, which svn doesn't know
> about and therefore cannot clean up.
>
> Even if temp files really have to be in the current WC due to some
> atomicity requirement, then maybe they could be tucked away in a
> subdirectory of .svn where they won't bother anybody?

Sure, for commit logs they could be put someplace else, I don't see
any problem with that. As for putting temp files in the .svn/ dir,
many of them already are (see .svn/tmp/). I honestly can't recall why
the log message file goes in the current working directory.

-garrett

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Received on Fri May 12 20:10:50 2006

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