On Wed, Sep 13, 2017 at 12:45 PM, Paul Hammant <p...@hammant.org> wrote: >> >> >> http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/subversion/trunk/tools/client-side/svn-viewspec.py >> > > Excellent! > > I see you posted a StackOverflow answer on that too, Mark - > https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7481860/create-folder-structure-based-on-file > > I'm one of those people that's blind to a lib or framework until I see > examples of how to use (can't read tutorials, can't read ref docs). I found > https://prabhugs.wordpress.com/2010/10/11/effective-and-easy-sparse-checkouts-svn-viewspec-py-script/ > too which gets me halfway there. > > The svn-viewspec script is implicitly include-centric, right? Perforce's > choice back in the 90's was to allow excludes and includes which is more > powerful even if it is dangerous.
I'd like more powerful "viewspec" features in (core) Subversion too. The svn-viewspec.py script (and it's viewspec format) is already quite useful, but I miss a couple of things (I know, this is open source and patches are welcome, but I'm not able to dig deeper atm, so just listing some ideas here): 1. Interaction with 'update'. I should be able to 'svn update --set-depth $viewspec' or something like that, making an existing WC sparse like in the viewspec. 2. Create a viewspec file out of an existing sparse WC (serialization of the sparseness, if you will). This also touches on another missing feature: there is currently no command to view / examine the sparseness of a working copy. 3. Excludes should be possible in the viewspec format, analogous to the "--set-depth exclude" working copy depth. So we have parity between the viewspec format and WC sparseness. 4. With svn-viewspec.py, the "base url" is part of the viewspec file. It would be nice to be able to give a "base url" by other means, independent of the viewspec file -- so I can apply the same viewspec on a branch as on trunk (assuming a multi-project trunk which is sparsely checked out). 5. Commands handling a viewspec file: should they read/write the viewspec from a property, a file, a pipe, ...? I think Brane already suggested a good approach for those last two points elsethread: On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 3:43 AM, Branko Čibej <br...@apache.org> wrote: > How about something along the lines of this: > > $ svn co svn://vcs/trunk --view foo +1, this shows the "base url" being independent of the viewspec. > with: > > $ svn propget svn:views svn://vsc/trunk > [foo] > bar/** > baz/qux > > [bar] > baz/** > > > In other words: available views are defined in a svn:views property on > the directory, and the user selects which (if any) view to use during > checkout, update or switch. Obviously once the working copy structure is > set up it'd remain sticky unless explicitly changed. > > For user-specific layouts, I can imagine having a --view-file or > --view-prop option to tell the client where to read the view definitions > from; but the svn:views property would be the default. I'm not sure about listing the "available views" in a default property, but okay, it's a possibility. I think it would be nice to be able to read it from a file, a url or a property (chosen by the user). In theory I'd say it would be nice to read it from a pipe, so you can 'cat', 'svn cat' or 'svn propget' the viewspec as input. -- Johan
