Graphical Representation of trees

[Dianne Chen <di...@yahoo.com>]

Hi again-

I have several years of experience with Clearcase from
a previous employer, but at my present job I am
looking to introduce the excellent svn to a CM-weak
organization. 

One advantage I had w/ CC was the ability to draw (on
a board, for example) elements with branches and merge
arrows to other branches with labels by the versions
of elements that got labeled. It was very convenient
because you could give a visual picture to a manager
(or newbie) and have them grasp what was going on.
There was also a tool (xlsvtree) that displayed the
same representation, so that a user did not have to
think of what was really going on inside (i.e.,
branches on elements were *really* just directories
hidden from casual view), and could just concentrate
on getting the correct element to the correct branch.

I notice that the images in the svn book at redbean do
not have such a straight-forward (at least to me)
representation, especially when they discuss how svn
performs a branch by "copying" to a branch "directory"
and then you use that directory.

What trouble does one get into when trying to draw a
pictoral representation of what is going on with svn
(creating branches for example, that get merged into
other branches and then back to the trunk), using a
Clearcase style format.

I am suspicois that my familiarity with 1 CM tool is
biasing my ability to explain in simple terms "how to
use the tool", especially when a graphical display
tool does not yet exist to supplement any explanation.


Comments? Help?

Thanks.


		
_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
http://vote.yahoo.com

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@subversion.tigris.org
For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@subversion.tigris.org

Re: was Graphical Representation of trees / now merge tracking

[Dianne Chen <di...@yahoo.com>]

--- Ben Collins-Sussman <su...@collab.net> wrote:

<snip>

> 
> SVN does no merge tracking at all right now, though
> it's on our feature roadmap.
> 
> In other words, when you run 'svn merge', then 'svn
> commit' the changes that resulted, the repository 
> has no idea where the changes came from... certainly
> not from a merge operation.  For all it knows, you
> could have typed the changes by hand.  Read about
> this stuff in chapter 4 of the svn book.
> 
Ben, thanks for adding this comment to to your email
reply. Although I read Ch4, including the paragraph
under "Tracking Merges Manually" it did not sink in
that Subversion can not tell *where* merges came from.
That is certainly a big point I missed. D'oh.

[Thrown out to the group at large]
So, do all svn users follow the book convention of
using a comment to indicate that a "merge occurred
with these source/destination revisions" ? Are there
any other techniques for tracking this that other
developers/Conf Mgrs use? 

Thanks!




		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail 

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@subversion.tigris.org
For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@subversion.tigris.org

Re: Graphical Representation of trees

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

On Sep 30, 2004, at 9:40 PM, Dianne Chen wrote:
>
> There was also a tool (xlsvtree) that displayed the
> same representation, so that a user did not have to
> think of what was really going on inside

Mmm, pretty tool.

>
> I notice that the images in the svn book at redbean do
> not have such a straight-forward (at least to me)
> representation, especially when they discuss how svn
> performs a branch by "copying" to a branch "directory"
> and then you use that directory.

Clearcase exposes per-file revnums, SVN does not.  And as you pointed 
out, svn branching is very different.  Trying to draw a pictoral 
representation is tricky;  at a minimum, it probably wouldn't be the 
same types of pictures.

Perhaps someday someone will start a project to create a graphical 
merge tool for svn;  but for now, no, you have no such thing.  Of 
course, that doesn't make merging impossible.  It's just not doable by 
automaton employees.  :-)


>
> What trouble does one get into when trying to draw a
> pictoral representation of what is going on with svn
> (creating branches for example, that get merged into
> other branches and then back to the trunk)

SVN does no merge tracking at all right now, though it's on our feature 
roadmap.

In other words, when you run 'svn merge', then 'svn commit' the changes 
that resulted, the repository has no idea where the changes came 
from... certainly not from a merge operation.  For all it knows, you 
could have typed the changes by hand.  Read about this stuff in chapter 
4 of the svn book.


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@subversion.tigris.org
For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@subversion.tigris.org