On Aug 20, 2006, at 10:42, johann petrak wrote:
> I think an "unversion" command should be a standard part of
> subversion: it can easily
> happen that one puts unwanted files or even directories in the
> repository by accident
> when a big project is initially added.
> It would probably be best to have a command that by default does
> what the workaround
> of copy/svn delete/copyback does, with a --force option that in
> addition removes the complete
> history of the file from the repository (this would be good to have
> if by accident very large
> files or directories got added).
Well these are two very different operations. The first is the one
that has the workaround described and is probably easy to implement,
should it be decided that it's worth it. (I'm guessing it probably
isn't worth it at this point, since the workaround is so simple and
easy, and it would take time to implement and test, and that's time
that could be better spent on more-important missing features for
which no workaround exists.)
The second is what has often been called "svnadmin obliterate". There
is this feature request:
http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=516
I understand that this is extremely difficult, not just to implement,
since Subversion is specifically designed to retain all history, so
making it suddenly forget some of that is counter to its very nature,
but also difficult to define what exactly is meant. Are we
obliterating a single item in the repository at a single revision? Or
all revisions of this item throughout time? What if it moved or was
renamed? What if it was copied? Are the copies removed too? Even if
they've subsequently changed substantially or completely? It's a
complicated issue, which is why it's not done yet. In the mean time,
you have the "svnadmin dump" / "svndumpfilter" / "svnadmin load"
alternative, which is deliberately cumbersome because as mentioned
Subversion's goal is to retain all history. I say "svnadmin
obliterate" above and not "svn obliterate" because since obliteration
would permanently destroy data, it is definitely not a command a
regular user should be able to do, and thus should be reserved for
repository administrators.
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Received on Mon Aug 21 17:24:15 2006