Julian: sounds like a good idea, I'll augment the FAQ.
Ryan: you and guoy have made a fairly compelling case (to me, at
least) that we should add a feature which at least saves the original
mod-time of a file in some sort of property; that information
wouldn't be totally lost.
On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 3:45 AM, Julian Foad <julianfoad_at_btopenworld.com> wrote:
> 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 16:11:11 CEST