[Svnmerge] Log of merges

[Archie Cobbs]

Giovanni Bajo wrote:
> Archie Cobbs <archie at dellroad.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>>I'm still skeptical :-)
> 
> 
> No problem :)
> I'm always worried about over-engineering solutions. I know sometimes I do that
> :)
> 
> 
>>With CVS, merge tags must be added manually. I.e.,
>>"MYBRANCH_MERGE_20051022" didn't just appear magically, someone had
>>to put it there.
>>
>>So why can't the SVN equivalent ("svn cp") be done in the SVN case?
>>It gives the same result - an easy way to see changes subsequent to
>>that merge, and an easy way to "checkout" the code at that tag.
> 
> That is fine with me -- but why can't we have svnmerge do it then? I think of
> svnmerge as the one program which should handle merging issues. It's a frontend
> of svn: there's absolutely nothing that people can't do without svnmerge. It's
> just that svnmerge makes many tasks easier because it already contains scripted
> logic that people would otherwise have to follow with their brain and fingers.
> 
> We could have "svnmerge tag" which creates merge tags automatically, and then
> "svnmerge log" which shows information about the merges. In fact, I would call
> this solution #4 (wrt my original list), as a possible implementation for
> "svnmerge log". But then, one should always do "svnmerge merge", followed by
> "snvmerge tag". This would be a pointless duplication IMO.
> 
> There's one thing I don't understand: do you agree that having a "svnmerge log"
> would be desirable? It looks like you agree about the fact that a maintainer
> might want to, eg, list all the merges he did. If we agree, I think it's clear
> that it's not something that it's currently easy to do (assuming one uses
> svnmerge to maintain a branch), then I don't see anything wrong on having
> svnmerge automate this.

Yes, an "svnmerge log" would be nice.

More generally, I believe if the usability is a problem that can be
solved in "svn" instead of "svnmerge", it should be solved there
instead. We should only solve usability issues specific to "svnmerge".

E.g., things like "auto create a tag when you merge" is not really
an svnmerge specific thing.

In particular, if something is easier in CVS than SVN, that's SVN's
problem! It's supposed to be a compelling replacement, remember? :-)

-Archie

__________________________________________________________________________
Archie Cobbs      *        CTO, Awarix        *      http://www.awarix.com