On 7/25/2011 9:58 AM, Mark Phippard wrote:
Agreed, but it is a logical design that falls out of the way
subdirectories work and the way people use them.
There are plenty of instances
where people did not want this behavior, and for them it is now
fixed.
Agreed again. Although the change I would have preferred would have
been an option to not keep a pristine copy at all for the
circumstances where it doesn't work out well.
You agree but you are also missing or glossing over my point. When you
copied that subdirectory you were not using a feature of SVN, you used
the OS. SVN cannot provide an option on the OS copy command.
And you seem to have missed the point that people understand and use OS
level commands and expect them to work. I'm sure I didn't invent the
idea of doing that, so it has almost certainly been promoted as an
advantage of the design on this list and in usage tutorials if not in
official documentation.
I'm not arguing that the change is bad or shouldn't have been done,
just that it is a very surprising change in design philosophy, and
projects that make surprising design changes without concern for
existing use patterns make me nervous about what other surprises may
be lurking in them.
Given how closely you follow the project, I am surprised you are
surprised.
I'm not surprised that the capability is not there in the new/different
WC format. I'm surprised that there is no option to maintain
currently-expected behavior in a release version.
This release has taken over 2 years and the new WC design
has not changed from the original proposal. If you go back to the lists
you will see the ramifications of this change were being discussed even
while we were still working on SVN 1.6 and the need for an svn detach
was raised back then.
Which makes it even more surprising that it was omitted.
The bottom line is that this has been a long
release cycle and the software is now good enough to use and benefit
from. There is no reason to hold it back.
If surprising behavior doesn't bother you...
If being able to copy
subdirectories is important than stick with 1.6 or help to drive the
effort to get scripts or patches submitted so that the feature can make
it into 1.8. If it is done with scripts, it can be delivered immediately.
I mostly use CentOS or RHEL, so if past history is any guide, I'll be on
1.6 there for a long time...
--
Les Mikesell
[email protected]
