Re: Switching

On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 1:33 PM, Andrew Reedick
<Andrew.Reedick_at_cbeyond.net> wrote:
>>
>> I can't, off the top of my head, think of a scenario where it would be
>> harmful to replace an unversioned directory with a versioned instance,
>> leaving any unversioned local files that happen to be there alone.
>> Other than maybe the chance that you'd accidentally commit them later,
>> but that is no different than if you had put the local files in after
>> the switch. Am I missing something? Is there a way to --force that
>> without also potentially --force'ing files that conflict to be
>> clobbered?
>>
>
> Dir permissions and ownership would change to that of the current user and umask and could create a security gap, but that probably falls under "if you're using --force, it's on your head".
>
> How are symlinks handled by switch --force? It fails, or does it look at the target file/dir when deciding whether to replace it with a versioned object?
>
> How are hardlinks handled by switch --force? Is the hardlinked file removed and replaced with a brand new file? Or does switch --force work directly on the hardlinked file thus updating all the "copies"?
>
> On the windows side, would replacing a junction cause problems?
>

For this particular case, where the 'unversioned' directory was in
fact created by svn and abandoned instead of being deleted during a
switch to a branch without it, I don't think any of those scenarios
are possible. But, you are right that in the general case svn would
have to check for special circumstances and raise conflicts if you
have done something weird.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell_at_gmail.com