Julian, thanks for taking some time to dive into this problem and write up your summary mail. I'll comment only on specific bits that I disagree with or have questions about (leaving you to assume that I think I understand and agree with the rest).
On 09/12/2012 10:43 AM, Julian Foad wrote:
> * 3DM describes a set of "functional requirements", while I'll paraphrase
> and comment on:
[...]
> 4. A node exists in the *context* of its siblings and parent; this
> context should be preserved in the result. -- The 'parent' part of the
> context pretty much follows from (3), while the 'siblings' part of the
> context is closely related to ordering and so may hardly be relevant in
> Subversion. Nevertheless, this idea bears further consideration.
Not sure precisely how/if this applies to Subversion. But I suspect you're
right regarding this requirement's meaning in the XML world -- sibling
ordering needing to be maintained and such. We can look into it, but my
guess is that this requirement is disinteresting for us.
> 5. In a copy-vs-modify situation, 3DM chooses that the modification
> should be applied to all the copies, yet states that this isn't always
> wanted. -- In Subversion, I don't think we want to do this; we might
> want it to be optional, controlled by a flag in a 'merge policy' or by
> some sort of callback.
I've generally pushed for exactly what 3DM recommends -- that changes are
applied to all copies. I want this because of my personal experiences with
moves and copies in my data sets:
A. Real moves are moves -- there's only one "copy" to deal with, so
the point here is rather moot.
B. I use copies for two different reasons (and do so quite regularly):
1. Splitting a file into two. When this happens, I want Subversion to
merge changes intended for the original single file into all the
file's current manifestations. Yep, most of those applications are
going to fail with textual conflicts -- that's fine with me. I
still want the chance to review those conflicts.
2. Templates. I routinely use versioned template files which are
copied (repeatedly) and where those copies are modified. I would
adore Subversion if, upon making a change to my template file,
Subversion could propagate that same change to all its copies!
I'm happy to have this behavior optional, but I strongly desire it to be
available.
--
C. Michael Pilato <cmpil...@collab.net>
CollabNet <> www.collab.net <> Enterprise Cloud Development
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