'Nested' working copies

[Kenneth Olving <Ke...@frameworx.com>]

Hi,

With 0.27 I played around a bit with svn:externals. I then noticed that it failed to recurse properly. Apparently this has been fixed in 0.29 (#1428). Ok, so that's good.

However, the externals stuff does not quite fit my needs. It is great for tracking a configuration 'mix' of things, but only if the things it brings together actually are things stored in svn repos. My model and tool also allows for tracking 'derived' (prebuilt) objects such that they can be used instead of the source they came from. These objects are immutable and makes no sense to store into a VC system - thus, those things I download and cache as static content from 'somewhere'. Whatever - I can go into more details later if needed.

The Book describes that 'you could certainly setup a nested wc by hand ...' etc. In fact, that's what I'd like to do (since my tool already handles the nitty-gritty details, the 'user experience' is still good). But: will svn operations like svn status correctly recurse in that case, like it would if it had been set up by svn:externals stuff? I know, I know - I could simply test it (and will) but maybe someone has a definitive answer right off the bat...

A follow up: in the case of svn:externals which brings in >1 physical repo (or a manually nested repo as described above), will a commit be atomic across repos? I doubt it at this stage since I haven't seen any mention of TPC and distributed txns but...technically Berkeley DB seems to support XA. Is there any plans at all to provide XA capability in svn? Something like that would be absolutely fantastic, not only in the >1 repo case, but also to coordinate between, say, a repo commit and entries made into some XA aware db.

ken1

Kenneth Olving
Senior CM Architect
The Frameworx Company
www.frameworx.com

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Everyone else has a cool sig, so I have a feeble one.


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Re: 'Nested' working copies

[Jack Repenning <jr...@collab.net>]

At 1:09 PM -0500 9/23/03, Ben Collins-Sussman wrote:
>"Kenneth Olving" <Ke...@frameworx.com> writes:
>
>  > A follow up: in the case of svn:externals which brings in >1
>>  physical repo (or a manually nested repo as described above), will a
>>  commit be atomic across repos?
>
>Nope.  That's a Really Really Hard Problem.  Instead, you should get
>exactly one atomic commit per unique repository.
>
>  > I doubt it at this stage since I haven't seen any mention of TPC and
>>  distributed txns but...technically Berkeley DB seems to support
>>  XA. Is there any plans at all to provide XA capability in svn?
>>  Something like that would be absolutely fantastic, not only in the
>>  >1 repo case, but also to coordinate between, say, a repo commit and
>>  entries made into some XA aware db.
>
>Yes, it would be nice, but no concrete plans yet.  We're about 10
>years behind Clearcase right now.  :-)

Well, in this area, Subversion is some unknown number of years 
*ahead* of ClearCase, since CC does not offer transactions at all, 
nor have I heard any promises to do so.  Likewise, CC does not allow 
anything like svn:externals (nested repositories/workspaces), unless 
you're willing to count "versioned symlinks."

But in places where it's ahead (particularly release management, 
branches, and merging),  ClearCase has more like a 20 year head 
start.  10 years is only when the name was changed from Domain 
Software Engineering Environment (DSEE) to ClearCase (with a brief 
whistle-stop at "Millenium").
-- 
-==-
Jack Repenning
CollabNet, Inc.
8000 Marina Boulevard, Suite 600
Brisbane, California 94005
o: 650.228.2562
c: 408.835-8090

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Re: 'Nested' working copies

[Ben Collins-Sussman <su...@collab.net>]

"Kenneth Olving" <Ke...@frameworx.com> writes:

> The Book describes that 'you could certainly setup a nested wc by
> hand ...' etc. In fact, that's what I'd like to do (since my tool
> already handles the nitty-gritty details, the 'user experience' is
> still good). But: will svn operations like svn status correctly
> recurse in that case, like it would if it had been set up by
> svn:externals stuff?

Nope, not yet.  The plan for post-1.0 svn is to eventually *remove*
the svn:externals feature, and it replace it with this behavior.  It
won't be trivial to implement.


> A follow up: in the case of svn:externals which brings in >1
> physical repo (or a manually nested repo as described above), will a
> commit be atomic across repos? 

Nope.  That's a Really Really Hard Problem.  Instead, you should get
exactly one atomic commit per unique repository.

> I doubt it at this stage since I haven't seen any mention of TPC and
> distributed txns but...technically Berkeley DB seems to support
> XA. Is there any plans at all to provide XA capability in svn?
> Something like that would be absolutely fantastic, not only in the
> >1 repo case, but also to coordinate between, say, a repo commit and
> entries made into some XA aware db.

Yes, it would be nice, but no concrete plans yet.  We're about 10
years behind Clearcase right now.  :-)

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