On 31. 3. 26 18:01, Timofei Zhakov wrote:
On Tue, Mar 31, 2026 at 5:47 PM Branko Čibej<[email protected]> wrote:
On 31. 3. 26 17:44, Timofei Zhakov wrote:
On Tue, Mar 31, 2026 at 5:40 PM Branko Čibej<[email protected]> wrote:
On 30. 3. 26 21:59, Timofei Zhakov wrote:
Hello all,
The problem I would like to address is that actions like picking the right
branch in a repository are sometimes annoying with the current UI of the
command-line. Although all operations are really well-designed, the user still
needs to manually input the whole URL of a branch/or use the relative path
syntax.
There is not enough user feedback. When interacting with a repository through
the CLI it feels like some abstract thing that exists somewhere on the remote
target - not a file-system tree. The current way we usually do that is one of
the following:
1. Imagine what we have on the server in our minds. It's often not that big of
a deal to type 30 characters when switching/merging stuff.
2. Use the web interface (if any).
3. Use third-party tools like TortoiseSVN Repository Browser (and the whole
ecosystem including branch picker in switch/merge which I believe is almost
the same thing).
4. Borrow the right command with the exact path from another resource (like
when first time checking out a new project).
The 2 and 3 are not always possible as the standard web interface is very
limited in terms of functionality and not always do we have the pleasure to use
the GUI apps.
What I believe we need to improve overall workflow with Subversion is a way to
browse repositories (without checking it out) directly in a terminal. Luckily
because of the way accessing remote targets is designed in Subversion, it's
possible to retrieve information of any arbitrary node without a need to fetch
it entirely.
I would like to propose introducing a tool for browsing remote repositories
(svnbrowse). It will be a TUI (terminal user interface) like-ish application
where a user could navigate the repository like in a web browser.
I have tried to implement it. A patch is attached below. I generally liked the
user experience it brings.
There are also a few issues we might face when implementing this feature;
1. It currently loads items pretty slowly; Initially I used the svn_client API.
However, it creates a new ra_session per each call. I believe it would
be better to switch to using svn_ra directly.
2. We might load the tree recursively for faster navigation between
directories. This would also allow fuzzy searching. But it makes the
operation unbounded.
3. Should it work over a working copy or it's a web browser replacement? Using
URL from a working copy makes it much more convenient to use as a user only
needs to type 'svnbrowse' to get into it.
4. The revision issue; What revision do we use? If implementing it like in the
rest of the commands (with --revision that defaults to HEAD), how often
should we resolve it? The RA API (and the protocol) also allows fetching the
contents of the HEAD directory (using svn_ra_get_dir2 with
SVN_INVALID_REVNUM revision). However, there is no way to get the revnum
back (without making an extra request).
5. Should it be a separate program or something like an option in
'svn list --please-let-me-browse-it'. I personally think that it should not
be in 'svn' command. By conceptual conventions of 'svn' there are minimal
interactions and it can be used for scripting as well. I believe it would be
much better to separate it into a different program.
6. I suggest limiting the scope to directory browsing as it's the simplest to
implement but it improves the experience by a lot. Later on, adding file
content browsing and log would be natural. Also it may act as an
alternative to svnmucc if a commit operation was implemented.
7. Do we use ncurses (library that the majority of TUI apps use) or figure out
something else?
This list is not complete and I may have missed something; To conclude, there
are plenty of things to be done and many problems with on obvious solution.
Better we try something out and get some feedback and vision of what is to be
improved. The prototype represents the general wireframe of what it should
like. I made it in like an hour to get an overall impression.
Please feel free to express your opinion about this idea. Dear svndev, it's
time to discuss some UI things >-<
So, if I'm reading this correctly, you're basically proposing a nicer interface
for svnmucc? Or just the read-only part of it?
I'm suggesting to start with a read-only browser with an opportunity
to implement a nicer interface for svnmucc in future.
But I think the primary focus of the minimal-working prototype is the
read-only part.
Ack. Sounds nice. In return, I propose not doing this in C but in Python,
preferably 3.10+. We have the bindings, and this is what Python is really good
at if used correctly.
I personally think that using anything besides C could potentially be
bad for cross-platformability (is this a word?). It's not guaranteed
that the platform that we are being run on has a Python interpreter
which is especially common on Windows.
You're forgetting that you have to install a C runtime on Windows for
practically anything. :)
The rest of the command-line tools don't use Python so why should svnbrowse.
Generally, with a good framework, it's not so hard to make such
applications in C.
Not really. Python gives you everything out of the box including curses,
and generally, to do the same thing in C as you in Python, you need at
least 10 times the number of lines of code. This is exactly the kind of
application that could benefit from our Python bindings.
On top of which, writing an event-loop-based user interface in C is one
of those horrors you want to avoid at all costs. Been there. In Python,
it's just another day of the week. But, it's up to you.
-- Brane
