Re: Why doesn't svn use /tmp for temporary files ? (subversion: message 1 of 10)

[Matthew Exon <ma...@yahoo.com.au>]

Garrett Rooney - rooneg@electricjellyfish.net wrote:
> On 5/11/06, subversion.mexon@spamgourmet.com
> <su...@spamgourmet.com> wrote:
> 
>> Just a question, because I tripped over this and found it very
>> irritating.  I've never used Subversion before, but have used CVS a lot.
>>  I was going through the tutorial, importing a simple project, but
>> instead of using -m to put a comment on the command line, I left it off
>> so that it would bring up an editor (I'm a verbose guy, I like
>> multi-line comments).  Subversion appears to use the CWD to hold the
>> comment file in this situation, meaning:
>>
>> 1) If I am importing the local directory, ".", I get a spurious file
>> svn-commit.tmp added to the repository.  Googling online, I found
>> hundreds of "Deleted spurious svn-commit.tmp file" commit lines in
>> various people's repositories, so this problem seems pretty widespread.
>>
>> 2) I can't be in the root directory and run "svn import
>> ~/temp/myprojfect file:///~/repository/myproject", because I don't have
>> permission to create svn-commit.tmp.
>>
>> So why doesn't Subversion behave like CVS, and indeed every other unix
>> program, and use /tmp for temporary files?  It seemed pretty
>> counterintuitive.
>>
>> It's svn version 1.1.4.  I expected this to be an FAQ, but I couldn't
>> see anything there.
> 
> 
> Subversion often atomically copies temporary files into place, so that
> you either see all of a file or none of it.  This doesn't work if
> you're copying between two filesystems, and since /tmp is often on a
> different filesystem than your working copy, that would be a problem.

OK.  But in the case where I specify the full paths, subversion has no
idea which filesystem I'm in.  I could have been in /tmp, in which case
it would have written there anyway.  So writing the temporary file in
the CWD isn't a guarantee that it'll be atomic, right?

Anyway, is there a known bugs page for Subversion?  You know, like the
known bugs section in manpages, for "bugs" that can't or shouldn't be
fixed.  This seems like a candidate: annoying and counterintuitive, but
not incorrect.

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Re: Why doesn't svn use /tmp for temporary files ? 1 of 10) (subversion: message 4 of 10)

[Matthew Exon <ma...@yahoo.com.au>]

Just getting back to my original point, I could reformulate the issue so
it sounds more like a bug that could be fixed:

1) Subversion shouldn't commit to the repository temporary files that it
created.

and/or...

2) Subversion shouldn't create temporary files in a directory it's busy
importing.

Both of those are detectable, incorrect situations.  I'm sure checking
for either of these would be pretty hairy (you'd need to have a global
data structure listing all the temporary files it currently has open;
yuck), but it's still a desirable feature.

Garrett Rooney - rooneg@electricjellyfish.net wrote:
> On 5/11/06, subversion.mexon@spamgourmet.com
> 
>> OK.  But in the case where I specify the full paths, subversion has no
>> idea which filesystem I'm in.  I could have been in /tmp, in which case
>> it would have written there anyway.  So writing the temporary file in
>> the CWD isn't a guarantee that it'll be atomic, right?
> 
> Nope, but it's more likely to be correct that /tmp is.

Possibly, I suppose.  I'd personally say that you should only go against
standard behaviour if by doing so you can eliminate the problem
completely.  But it's a judgement call either way.

>> Anyway, is there a known bugs page for Subversion?  You know, like the
>> known bugs section in manpages, for "bugs" that can't or shouldn't be
>> fixed.  This seems like a candidate: annoying and counterintuitive, but
>> not incorrect.
> 
> There's the issue tracker, but I don't know of any other page that
> does precisely what you're asking.  That's why we ask people to bring
> up questions like this on the mailing lists.

Does the issue tracker have a "won't fix" option?  That'd do, at a
pinch.  I do think tracking this information is valuable.

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Re: Why doesn't svn use /tmp for temporary files ? 1 of 10)

[Garrett Rooney <ro...@electricjellyfish.net>]

On 5/11/06, subversion.mexon@spamgourmet.com

> OK.  But in the case where I specify the full paths, subversion has no
> idea which filesystem I'm in.  I could have been in /tmp, in which case
> it would have written there anyway.  So writing the temporary file in
> the CWD isn't a guarantee that it'll be atomic, right?

Nope, but it's more likely to be correct that /tmp is.

> Anyway, is there a known bugs page for Subversion?  You know, like the
> known bugs section in manpages, for "bugs" that can't or shouldn't be
> fixed.  This seems like a candidate: annoying and counterintuitive, but
> not incorrect.

There's the issue tracker, but I don't know of any other page that
does precisely what you're asking.  That's why we ask people to bring
up questions like this on the mailing lists.

-garrett

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