Ben,
This is a pretty well written answer to a Frequently Asked Question that
doesn't seem to be in <faq.html>. Fancy putting it there?
- Julian
On Thu, 2008-07-10 at 21:43 -0500, Ben Collins-Sussman wrote:
> This feature has been discussed over and over through the years; if
> you search the dev@ archives, you can read the debates. The opinion
> of the dev team is that this is not a useful feature in general;
> while it might help a very small minority of users that wish to track
> original timestamps, it would create more trouble and complexity for
> the majority, and be hard to maintain. So the lack of this feature is
> a deliberate decision, not an accidental oversight.
>
> The arguments against the feature have basically been:
>
> * When no version control is used, then it's clear file timestamps are
> critical. They're the only indication of a file's "version". But
> once the files are placed into version control, what's the point of
> tracking the original datestamps? Version control is now providing
> much more detailed tracking of versions and dates. It's solving the
> problem is a much more thorough way.
>
> * Version control is typically used for code. Having timestamps
> touched by 'svn update' solves the 90% use-case of causing programs
> like 'make' to rebuild exactly what has changed. This is a useful and
> important default behavior.
>
> * For all other cases, the 'use-commit-times=true' option causes
> timestamps to reflect repository mod-times, rather than 'svn up'
> mod-times, thus providing the same sort of simulated
> versioning-via-timestamp for files being exported to people without
> subversion.
>
> * If you want to be even friendlier to people without subversion, you
> can put $LastChangedDate$ or $Revision$ keywords directly into the
> files to be expanded.
>
> If none of these features satisifes your use-case, I'm curious to hear
> exactly what you're trying to accomplish, and why these solutions
> don't work for you.
>
>
>
>
> 2008/7/10 郭煜 <guoy_at_dscomm.com.cn>:
> > Dear Mr. Unterberg,
> >
> >
> > Yes , I see that subversion support good functions but based on lost
> > file modify date. Is it?
> >
> > I like subversion client very much. But as an end user, we can't select
> > a version control system which can't save file modify date. Because this is
> > very important for our team-work in software developement progress. It's so
> > sorry.
> >
> > I think that you can get better idea yourself to shot the problem
> > later. Perhaps other version control system could be your referrence. If
> > this problem is ok, contract me as soon as you can please. We'll select
> > subversion as our version control system.
> >
> > Thanks & Best Regards,
> > Yvon Guo Yu , 郭煜 / 上海迪爱斯通讯设备公司 开发一部
> > Addr: 上海市平江路15号（zip:200050）
> > Tel(O): 86-21-64031580 x 2512
> > Tel(MB): 13916313249
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Norbert Unterberg" <nunterberg_at_gmail.com>
> > To: "郭煜" <guoy_at_dscomm.com.cn>
> > Cc: <users_at_subversion.tigris.org>; <dev_at_subversion.tigris.org>
> > Sent: Friday, July 11, 2008 5:06 AM
> > Subject: Re: Subversion Problem - How to save file modify time?
> >> 2008/7/10 郭煜 <guoy_at_dscomm.com.cn>:
> >> > Dear Invendor,
> >> >
> >> > This is a software company in china. I'm an engineer at
> >> > develope-management department.
> >> >
> >> > We used other version control system as perforce or starteam before.
> >> > Now we are trying subversion.
> >> >
> >> > During trying subversion, we find that file modify time could not be
> >> > saved into subversion and get from subversion.
> >> >
> >> > Is it a design problem or deploy problem ? I hope it's a deploy
> >> > problem. How to shot it, if a deploy problem.
> >> >
> >>
> >> There is a configuration option "use-commit-times" which you can find
> >> in the documentation, It does not preserve the real file modify time
> >> but the commit time which might be good enough.
> >> However, for software development, the default behaviour (file time is
> >> the time of last update or checkout) usually works best.
> >>
> >> The problem with preserving file modify time is that it is very hard
> >> to do right. What is the correct modify time if two people change the
> >> same file and then they commit/update/merge the data? What to do when
> >> merging a branch? IF SVN modifies the file contents during a commit
> >> (see svn:keyword property) does that count as a file modification or
> >> not?
> >>
> >> Norbert
> >>
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Received on 2008-07-11 10:46:07 CEST