A little suggestion - "Safe mode"

[Alex Besogonov <cy...@scb.udsu.ru>]

Hello dev,

I have a little suggestion (post 1.0, of course) to improve
Subversion usability - "safe mode". It means that one can
never lose any changes accidently. CVS works this way:
even if you use "get clean copy" option in update, CVS
will keep modified files.

And a lot of CVS users expect SVN to like CVS (one my
colleague _did_ lost his local modifications, when he ran
recursive SVN revert).

-- 
Best regards,
 Alex Besogonov        mailto:cyberax@scb.udsu.ru



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Re: A little suggestion - "Safe mode"

[Ron Bieber <ro...@bieberlabs.com>]

On Sat, 2004-01-10 at 14:17, C. Michael Pilato wrote:
> Alex Besogonov <cy...@scb.udsu.ru> writes:
<snip>

> Well, duh, that's what 'revert' does.  But what does that have to do
> with CVS?  If your colleague expected SVN to be like CVS, he would
> have never used the 'revert' command at all, because CVS doesn't have
> such a command.
> 
cvs update -C essentially gives you this behavior for files that are in
the repository and workarea and saves your original modifications as
.#filename.baserev as pointed out by ghudson in another response.

I know I have used this 'feature' of CVS after making tons of changes to
debug a problem, finding the problem, and wanting to start the fix from
a pristine state with the modified files as a reference.   Since I know
the files are there, I take them for granted and will do an update -C to
start from 'scratch' and merge the changes that I know are the actual
fix into the pristine file to resume testing.  

> Sounds to me like "safe mode" is an option that one configures in
> one's own head, probably near that other famous option: "look before
> you leap."
> 
This is a valid point and there are work arounds to the behavior
described above (like doing an svn status, look for modified files, and
copy them somewhere before doing a revert).   
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Re: A little suggestion - "Safe mode"

[Greg Hudson <gh...@MIT.EDU>]

On Sat, 2004-01-10 at 15:17, C. Michael Pilato wrote:
> For updates, SVN parallels CVS's behavior.  You will not lose local
> mods during an update.

When saying this, it's good to add a caveat: if your some of your local
mods are the same as the repository's changes to the file, you won't
lose those modifications themselves, but there will be no information
keeping track of the fact that you made them.  (That is, there will be
no way to recreate exactly the file you had before you did the update.)

In reality, almost nobody ever runs into this as a problem.  CVS keeps a
copy of the file you had in .#filename.baserev, but most people don't
even know that, nor do they really care.


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Re: A little suggestion - "Safe mode"

["C. Michael Pilato" <cm...@collab.net>]

Alex Besogonov <cy...@scb.udsu.ru> writes:

> Hello dev,
> 
> I have a little suggestion (post 1.0, of course) to improve
> Subversion usability - "safe mode". It means that one can
> never lose any changes accidently. CVS works this way:
> even if you use "get clean copy" option in update, CVS
> will keep modified files.

For updates, SVN parallels CVS's behavior.  You will not lose local
mods during an update.

> And a lot of CVS users expect SVN to like CVS (one my
> colleague _did_ lost his local modifications, when he ran
> recursive SVN revert).

Well, duh, that's what 'revert' does.  But what does that have to do
with CVS?  If your colleague expected SVN to be like CVS, he would
have never used the 'revert' command at all, because CVS doesn't have
such a command.

Sounds to me like "safe mode" is an option that one configures in
one's own head, probably near that other famous option: "look before
you leap."

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