SVN externals - using a GUID style instead of a path?

http://subversion.apache.org/docs/release-notes/1.5.html#externals

The relative URLs being allowed in svn:externals was a huge step
forward. But it still relies on the source path not ever changing.

For example:

/repos/zag foo/bar1

Which is fine as long as "zag" never changes its name.

What if there was some sort of a GUID value for each object, created the
first time that the object is added to the repository, that could then
be used as the source URL?

/repos/GUID:4e1243bd22c66e76c2ba9eddc1f91394e57f9f83 foo/bar1

Which would hopefully track /repos/zag as it changes from /repos/zag to
/repos/zig to /repos/forgreatjustice.

(I suspect this all ties in with the copy/rename issue, which is itself
a rather hairy topic.)

Is this also a moot point if you use the "pegged revision" style of
svn:externals where you prefix the property value with "-r ####"? That
even if "/repos/zag" changes to "/repos/zig" it won't matter because
you're pegging to a revision before the name change occured?
Received on 2011-07-29 14:18:13 CEST