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how to contribute feature of unknown popularity

From: <svnusertemp_at_href.com>
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 22:03:53 +0000

Re: export --skipfilesmatchingsize
Prior thread link:
<http://svn.haxx.se/users/archive-2010-06/0040.shtml>http://svn.haxx.se/users/archive-2010-06/0040.shtml

Hi, I am the person who wanted this feature and worked on testing it
over recent months. It has been working well for some time, and I
use it often. I use it because I build a lot of deployment servers
where, on a daily or weekly basis, much (often more than 90%) of a
system stays as-is and a small amount needs to be brought in from
subversion. I use export (as opposed to update) to avoid having .svn
files scattered throughout production machines. The main reason I
like the skip feature is that it lets me deal with DLLs and other
files that are (a) unchanging and (b) in use at the time of
export. The normal export feature aborts when it encounters a
pre-existing file that cannot be overwritten because it is in use;
with the skip option, I can still export that branch of the
repository and pick up any new/additional/changed
files. Originally, I thought the skip feature would be a good way
to save bandwidth and time. In the end, that was not as critical for
me as being able to skip over in-use, unchanged DLLs.

I understand that many people do not need this feature, because they
do not use export often, or if they do, they export into empty target
folders, or they are not using Windows.

So my question is, even if this is an unpopular feature, is there
some way to contribute the source back to the main development trunk?
The modification consists of 4 .c files and 1 .h file. We started
from source from CollabNet, back in April 2010. We have not merged
in changes from the trunk since then, and I am starting to worry that
if we wait much longer, it will be unnecessarily difficult to merge
in our contribution.

I have Windows binaries available for anyone who would like to try
the feature.

I have tested it on Win2003 Server (32-bit) and Windows 7 Home
Premium 64-bit.

The flag name was designed long on purpose, (a) to avoid any
potential conflict with other flags and (b) to self-document the
feature. The feature does simply compare the byte size of each file,
and skips the export of that particular file when the size
matches. While it is arguable that this does not help with certain
types of files (bitmap images as an example) where a developer might
make a real change without a size change...... the other benefits
meant that it was still a very useful feature (to me).

Looking forward to some wisdom for contributing...

-Ann
Received on 2010-07-15 00:24:48 CEST

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