Bert Huijben wrote: > > From: Gavin 'Beau' Baumanis [mailto:gav...@thespidernet.com] > > > > On the user's list I noticed this thread; > > http://subversion.tigris.org/ds/viewMessage.do?dsForumId=1065&dsMessageId=2423210 > > > > which ultimately asks for, > > "Is there a way to find out if a file ever existed at a particular URL" [...]
> 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. Hi Bert. Maybe "existed at a particular URL" is not the right way to describe the class of questions that are lacking, but there are plenty of times when users need to ask a question like When did a entry named "www" last exist in the directory ^/branches/2....@head ? That may be a better way to describe the sort of question Gavin is interested in tackling. - Julian > > 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. >
