Re: how to make svn _follow_ symbolic links?

On Jul 22, 2009, at 18:52, Les Mikesell wrote:

> Again, think about what should happen if you delete your own workspace
> and ask svn to recreate it. With your symlink-replacing concept it
> will
> still look more or less the same, but it won't work the same. You've
> lost information that subversion is intended to maintain.

He doesn't want Subversion to maintain it -- he wants the Subversion
repository to be completely unaware that he has replaced a real file
with a symlink in his local working copy. To the repository, it
should look as if there is a real file there. He wants the Subversion
client to "read through" the symlink at whatever it's pointing at for
all updates and commits.

> And
> philosophically, an update should give you the same thing as a a
> checkout, so if you update your own existing working copy it should
> convert your symlink into the copy it would deliver in a new checkout.

What he wants is for Subversion to put the updated contents at the
location pointed to by the symlink.

This is of course incompatible with Subversion's existing handling of
symlinks, which is that if a real file is replaced with a symlink,
Subversion complains about that. Perhaps there could be a new svn
property that could be applied on the enclosing directory that tells
it to handle symlinks differently in that directory.

> I don't think that's really what you want - and even if it is, it
> isn't
> what a version control system should deliver.

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Received on 2009-07-23 04:31:41 CEST