Actually, everyone who has responded to me thus far is right in their
assessments, but particularly Lorenz.
I *did* misunderstand the layout of the repository and working copy. The
working copy is not a complete mirror of the repository after all - I was
using the Tortoise tool improperly by clicking Repo-browser on the working
copy, and thinking that I was browsing the working copy. Duh. Apparently,
that's what happens when Linux chicks are forced to use Windows. I've
ditched Tortoise and am sticking to the command line from now on. Once I
figured that out, everything else came easy. So thanks, all, for the
questions back - they really helped.
I actually do appreciate John's suggestions to completely reorganize,
although I do not intend to do it immediately. I am pretty sure that I
understand, for instance, *why* the last developer created a separate branch
for each update to the website (ease of separation, ability to quickly track
and revert to previous versions)....but given that a website gets edited
several times a week, I am not sure yet that I would peg it as the cleanest
choice. And since I am the only person who works on this site, the workflow
that gets set up should probably be the one that works for me, not the last
guy who worked here. But I do agree with you, Ryan, that the best time to
think about it seriously is probably not while I am also simultaneously
learning ASP, SVN, and IIS, nor before I have a better grasp of the non-web
people's method of requesting changes from me.
-Alexis
BTW: Sorry, Lorenz, but I am not even going to get into the discussion about
the merits of top posting vs bottom posting any more than I am going to
ponder whether one should feed the roll of toilet paper over the top or
squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom.
-----Original Message-----
From: Ryan Schmidt [mailto:subversion-2007b@ryandesign.com]
Sent: Monday, October 01, 2007 6:45 PM
To: John Peacock
Cc: Turner, Alexis (GPG); users@subversion.tigris.org
Subject: Re: Best practice, working copy and repository
On Oct 1, 2007, at 11:13, John Peacock wrote:
> On Oct 1, 2007, at 09:41, Turner, Alexis (GPG) wrote:
>> Please forgive the newbie question - I've just inherited a website
>> that uses Subversion which I have never used before. [snip]
>
> I suspect what you have is just a very poorly organized repository,
> with way too many projects lumped together [snip]
>
> It's not too late to reorganize your repository along more sane
> lines; it is merely a matter of a lot of 'svn mv' commands to move
> everything around [snip]
This isn't even a particularly Subversion-specific insight, but I
would rather suggest that if you have just inherited a project which
uses a tool which you've never used before, your first task should
not be to declare it to be poorly organized and restructure the whole
thing. Rather, you should work on understanding the project, and
understanding the tool that was used. Maybe you should give the
original developers and planners of the project the benefit of the
doubt, and assume that they did know what they were doing, and that
the current organization of the project may serve some purpose after
all. I suggest that only after you really understand the project and
the tool and have worked with both for some time should you
contemplate whether reorganization is necessary.
Received on Tue Oct 2 15:03:43 2007