SVNROOT (again)

Sorry to bring this up again; I think it's been a few years, and
worth a revisit. I found this old thread, which didn't seem
to ever make it anywhere:

    http://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2002-10/0164.shtml

Basically, it proposed to accept '//' as command substitution for
svn info's URL: parameter, truncated to its root. At least
that's how I read/expect it. Which basically is the same as
CVSROOT. Sounds good to me! Why wasn't this ever implemented?
Maybe my search just missed a definitive discussion?

I need some way to provide CVS's CVSROOT functionality to my
Subversion users. We'll Real Soon Now be converting from CVS to
Subversion and it appears that it will be *too hard* for common
users to type URLs (which would be *really* long in our case),
and probably even too hard to use environment variables like
$REPOURL, in svn commands.

IOW, even "svn switch $REPOURL/branches/feature42" is too
unwieldy. Why? I have to play down to the most ignorant user's
abilities. It's apparently hard for users to remember an envar's
name, or even how to specify one! Also tough to conventionalize
and enforce.

But we do have some environmental setup scripts happening before
any would-be svn usage. So I can do anything I want before-hand
with the environment, like

    SVNROOT="some://really/long/path/to/branches/".

Today they are able to do things like:

    cvswrapper checkout 6.0 # get the v6.0 branch

My goal is to not have to write an analogous 'svnwrapper', even
if it's just a small bash function. Though it's looking
inevitable. The acceptable svn anolog would be:

    svn checkout //6.0
    # or
    svn checkout //branches/6.0

Am I the only one in this predicament of having to enable Average
Joe Developer?

SVK has adopted and conventionalized the '//' syntax. Does
that help to justify Subversion's adoption? (I realize '//' is a
synonym for '/' on unix, but I don't find that a compelling
reason not to use it.)

Another strength of SVK's // approach is that it enables a
shell's "command completion". So to get to my deeply nested
branch at say
"some://really.long.root/branches/micah/features/fastfrob", I
could just type:

    svn sw //b<tab>/m<tab>/f<tab>/f<tab>

Granted, that introspection would be slower than with SVK, but
still doable.

-- 
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