Re: subversion equivalent of 'cvs update -C'

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>]

On Thu, Oct 17, 2002 at 12:47:52AM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> Colin Watson wrote:
> > I wouldn't be so quick to discount subversion. :) I keep much of my home
> > directory in it, and it's behaving very nicely.
> 
> Do you have any docs for doing that written up yet?

Not yet. I do plan to eventually.

> In particular, I'm interested in what you did about permissions and,
> did you use svn:externals (or some method to allow for mini home
> directory subset checkouts), and how are you laying out the repository
> to handle branching of subprojects.

I have the beginnings of a script for dealing with permissions by
storing them in custom properties, but it's nowhere near ready for
prime-time yet. Symlinks are more urgent (so I can implement something
like .hide easily). I have svn:externals in partial use, but would like
relative paths in that property to work before using it widely. The last
seems to be crystallizing into something like:

  src/debian/binfmt-support/trunk/binfmt-support
  src/debian/binfmt-support/tags/binfmt-support-1.1.0

... etc., but I may shift the trunk up a level for convenience's sake.
My home directory itself tends not to branch so I haven't bothered doing
anything about that.

In short, though it's reduced my stress in keeping several home
directories in sync by an enormous amount, I still have a lot of work to
do before it's anything like your "Life in CVS" ... incidentally, I
bought a random Linux magazine recently mostly on the strength of your
name being on the cover for that article. :-)

> (Oh, and what have you done about the issue of /usr/bin/svn not being
> available on eg, most of *.debian.org? :-)

I already had to compile a static svn client for chiark, which is
potato, so that's not a problem. Also I need a good implementation of
.hide before I can check out dotfiles and such onto untrusted machines.

-- 
Colin Watson                                  [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]