> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gavin 'Beau' Baumanis [mailto:gav...@thespidernet.com]
> Sent: dinsdag 24 november 2009 2:16
> To: dev@subversion.apache.org
> Subject: Find if a file ever existed.
>
> Hi Everyone,
>
> On the user's list I noticed this thread;
> http://subversion.tigris.org/ds/viewMessage.do?dsForumId=1065&dsMessage
> Id=2423210
>
> which ultimately asks for,
> "Is there a way to find out if a file ever existed at a particular URL"
>
> The reply was, there wasn't a built-in way to accomplish this;
> I did find this thread;
> http://svn.haxx.se/users/archive-2003-12/0350.shtml
> By searching the users mail archive
> (grep the output of svn log -v)
>
> But it still isn't nice / user-friendly / built-in.
I think most of our users use Subversion to ask questions like
* How did this file (u...@rev) come in its current state?
* When was this file (u...@rev) removed?
Subversion was designed to answer this kind of questions.
The question was there ever some file at URL is not related to the revision
history Subversion was designed for. We track the history of nodes that
exist as a specific URL in specific revisions. The URL without a revision
(or just @HEAD) is not something that is versioned inside subversion.
>
> So I have a few questions;
>
> In the sense of - I was thinking that I could contribute a little more,
> by producing an appropriate feature proposal - because I have
> personally at times wanted to do the same thing.
> In my case, I know the source code tree pretty well and was able to
> find the file I wanted by viewing through the history of the containing
> directory with TRAC...
>
> Anyway,
> Before I go and spend some decent time on writing any proposal I
> thought I would do a "pre" scoping project and illicit some feedback to
> help guide the direction of the proposal.
>
> So a few starting questions I have are;
>
> Is there a specific reason or reasons as to why this feature hasn't
> happened already? is it simply time/resources/money? or this is a
> significant technical "gotch-ya" that puts put of the realm of natural
> product progression?
The primary question would be: What use case does this feature solve?
Personally I can't think of use cases that can't be solved in another way
without this brute force.
* Did this file (u...@rev2) exist at this URL?
(Just follow the file history)
* When was this file (u...@rev2) deleted?
(svn log -r HEAD:rev2 u...@rev2)
> Does wc-ng better facilitate this feature to be implemented?
WC-NG is a replacement of the working copy library. URL history is stored in
the repository, so this is unrelated to WC-NG
> And finally (as a start-off question) - While I understand a
> restricted, small-scoped proposal is a good one - I assume that the
> proposal should not be so restrictive as to merely look for a child of
> a given parent - but more-so ensure there is a capability to search the
> entire source tree for a matching search pattern (file/directory name)?
Bert
>
> Thanks for any thoughts.
>
> Gavin.
