On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 01:05:29PM -0700, Galen Seitz wrote: > Hi, > > I'm seeing what appears to me to be inconsistent or undocumented > behavior when using the --targets option of svndumpfilter. If I want > to remove a given path, the following works as expected: > $ svndumpfilter exclude --drop-empty-revs path/to/delete < in > out > > This also works: > $ cat > foo > path/to/delete > $ svndumpfilter exclude --drop-empty-revs `cat foo` < in > out > > However, if I use the same file with the --targets option, the > specified path is not deleted: > $ svndumpfilter exclude --drop-empty-revs --targets foo < in > out > > After some experimentation, I discovered that when using the --targets > option, the leading slash on the path is required. This works: > $ cat > foo > /path/to/delete > $ svndumpfilter exclude --drop-empty-revs --targets foo < in > out > > If the requirement for the leading slash is the intended behavior, it > would be helpful if this were documented. I didn't see any mention of > it in my searches.
This smells like a bug. Prefixes passed from the command line get a slash prepended if they don't have it. But the same isn't done for targets listed in the targets file, probably because this was overlooked when the --targets option was implemented. This shouldn't be hard to fix. Please file an issue if you have time to do so (see http://subversion.apache.org/reporting-issues.html). > As a side note, the documentation for > svndumpfilter isn't clear as to the preferred position for options. > svndumpfilter exclude PATH_PREFIX... > Should they appear before or after the subcommand? They appear to > work in either position. To annoy die-hard unix fans SVN option switches work _anywhere_ on the command line. This is a deliberate difference to CVS. E.g. the -d option in CVS means different things depending on where it appears. Having unique option names was a design goal of SVN's command line interface, to prevent ambiguity and to allow options to appear anywhere.
