Oliver Betz wrote:
> But in many other cases, mtime is a _very valuable_ information and
> shall be conserved. Photographs and DLLs are both examples where the
> file creation occurs far from commit and therefore commit time isn't a
> viable alternative.
Photographs and DLL's typically have meta-data tags contained within the file so
the information is not lost, just not as easily accessible as you might like.
> I also see that there are pitfalls, and I hope that the subversion
> developers find a stable and useful solution.
>
> BTW: I also wondered why there is "active resistance" against
> preserving mtime.
There isn't 'active resistence' but rather 'conservative caution'. There has
not, to date, been a design proffered which preserves something like mtime
without serious side effects. For example, because mtime is based on the client
machine (as opposed to commit time, which is based on the server), if the client
machines are not synchronized, the value is not meaningful. At the very least,
mtime is much more prone to inconsistency among multiple machines because of
this. Additionally, *everyone* who uses Subversion with a build tool like make,
Ant, etc. will have their build process break completely if this feature gets
turned on (even by accident).
If you or someone else who believes this is a vital feature can produce a design
that would deal with these issues, even if you cannot code it yourself, I have
no question that the feature will get added. But that hasn't happened yet, and
until that happens, claims that the project is resisting this are just paranoia.
In all of my years in the open source community, I can assure you that this is
one of the most careful and considered projects I have ever seen. Every single
feature is carefully considered before being added, and as such the project is
extremely stable and consistent.
John
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Received on 2008-07-14 13:11:07 CEST