[PATCH] new property 'svn:tarballs'

[SteveKing <st...@gmx.ch>]

Hi,

Since my suggestion about a new property for
subversion "svn:tarballs" showed some interest
(see http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&msgNo=40545)
I implemented this function.
Attached is the diff and the log message to go
with it (from revision 6459).

The new function works like this:
- set the new property on a versioned folder, 
  e.g. svn:tarballs
  neon http://www.webdav.org/neon/neon-0.24.0.tar.gz
- when you do a checkout/update/switch the subversion
  client will check if that source tarball needs downloading
  and/or extracting.
- if download/extract is needed then the client will try
  to download the tarball into the folder which has the
  property set.
- if in the config file a untar/unzip program is set then
  it starts that program and extracts the tarball to
  the folder set in the property
  if no such program is set then the tarball is just left
  in place so the user can extract it later manually.

That way all needed external libraries can be fetched
by the subversion client and users don't need to
visit several websites and spend their time searching
for the correct library to download and extract.

Some notes:

The new functions don't affect any other functions
in the subversion client. If there are bugs they
won't affect other functions. So I really hope
this patch will go in before 1.0 :)

For the downloading of the tarball I used a new
library called libcurl. You can get it from
http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/
I used this library 'cause it's cross-platform and
can handle many protocolls, including ftp and also
supports proxies - you never know on what kind
of server the source tarballs are stored.

I tested the patch on my windows machine. Since I
don't have access to a linux machine right now I haven't
tested it there. I hope someone else will test it on other
platforms. Also I don't know Python at all so
the necessary changes to the project file generator
to include the libcurl library are not in the patchfile.

I hope you enjoy the patch :)

Stefan

Re: [PATCH] new property 'svn:tarballs'

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

At 8:22 PM +0200 7/12/03, SteveKing wrote:
>The new function works like this:
>- set the new property on a versioned folder,
>   e.g. svn:tarballs
>   neon http://www.webdav.org/neon/neon-0.24.0.tar.gz

-1.

I have often had this problem, as a buildmeister.  But this solution 
doesn't meet my needs.  This approach means you become dependent on 
that other site's longevity policies, and your dependency persists 
for the lifetime of your repository.  If they decide that 0.24.0 can 
be scrubbed nine months after 0.25 comes out, but you want to support 
for ten months (or never upgrade for 20 months), you lose.

That sort of ephemeral, untrustworthy assistance is OK in a 
developer-support world, or in a (HEAD) build tool, but if you really 
want to version it, you need to take responsibility  yourself for its 
long-term existence: put the tarball into your own repo.
-- 


Jack Repenning
CollabNet
email: jrepenning@collab.net
home:  408-248-9708
cell:  408-835-8090
fax:   586-408-6748

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Re: [PATCH] new property 'svn:tarballs'

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

"SteveKing" <st...@gmx.ch> writes:

> Since my suggestion about a new property for
> subversion "svn:tarballs" showed some interest
> (see http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&msgNo=40545)
> I implemented this function.
>
> That way all needed external libraries can be fetched
> by the subversion client and users don't need to
> visit several websites and spend their time searching
> for the correct library to download and extract.

I should have spoke sooner, before you started coding.  I know that
someone else liked this idea, but I really don't like it.  To me, it
epitomizes the worst kind of "feature creep" that software should
resist.

It sounds like a whole new feature designed to fix one specific
annoyance related to bootstrapping Subversion.  First, I maintain that
most software distributions *don't* force you to grab and unpack
miscellaneous tarballs in order to compile.  There's no general "itch"
to scratch here.  Subversion is somewhat unique in that regard.

And second, I maintain that this isn't even a problem with Subversion:
people building svn for the very first time always download the
release-tarball, which *already has* neon, apr, and apr-util unpacked.
After a 'make install', the three auxilliary libraries are in the
system, which means a checkout of svn HEAD no longer requires any
tarballs.  So even if we patched this feature into svn, svn wouldn't
be using it!  There's no need.


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