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RE: feature request: svn revision alias

From: Paul Koning <Paul_Koning_at_dell.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:06:49 -0500

>>>>> "Andrew" == Andrew Reedick <Reedick> writes:

>> -----Original Message----- From: Paul Koning
>> In Subversion, a revision number always identifies a revision of
>> the repository. The WHOLE repository.
>>
>> Any one checkin is likely to change only a subset of the
>> repository, but nevertheless the rev number identifies a
>> particular state of the whole repository. If you care what bits
>> were changed by a particular rev, do "svn log -r 1234 -v" on the
>> repository root, and svn will tell you.

 Andrew> That's my point. The revision number applies to the WHOLE
 Andrew> repository. The Humans use tags to baseline a SUBSET of the
 Andrew> repository. A revision number by itself is useless for that
 Andrew> purpose.
 
>> So the proposal certainly is logically valid.

 Andrew> The OP's proposal is: The svn revision is pretty much
 Andrew> equivalent to what a tag is in other systems. svn alias
 Andrew> <rev> <name> (or svn revalias <rev> <name>)

 Andrew> In any system, a tag is a subset of a repository, normally
 Andrew> used to create a baseline. (That's the definition I'm
 Andrew> working under.)

Ok, now I see the problem. Maybe it comes from thinking in CVS, where
there is no real repository, just a large number of basically
unrelated files each with its own history and tags.

I don't think of a tag that way. Instead, I view it as a name for a
point in the history of my code.

So one day I may say "I'd like to see the code for "ls" as it was in
the baselevel tagged "V3.14_baselevel3" and another day I may go
looking for the code of another piece with that same tag.

To do that, I'd ask Subversion for the subtree in question as it was
in that rev. Right now I'd use a numeric rev; with aliases I could
use a named rev.

Either way, I think of the repository as a 3D file system: the usual
two dimensions of the name space tree, plus a time dimension. A rev
and a tag is just a label of a particular value of the time dimension
-- a plane of the 3D space -- and I can see any part of that plane --
any subtree in the file system as of that point in time.

    paul

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Received on 2008-02-19 18:29:18 CET

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