From: Rafaël Carré <rafael.carre_at_gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2010 01:53:58 +0200

On Sat, 12 Jun 2010 22:34:31 +0200
Frank Gevaerts <frank_at_gevaerts.be> wrote:

Hello,

> Hi,
>
> I've recently found out that some people consciously don't set svn
> properties and keywords on files they commit, for various reasons,
> including "it's not convenient with git-svn" and "they're useless".

I think the svn properties used in rockbox are useless and a waste of
time.

Even more when I have to maintain a separate svn checkout only for the
purpose of setting them, but also when just using Subversion tools.

Having a look at them (I know there are other properties but these are
the only ones I know which are used in rockbox):


- eol-style
I don't even know if this should be set to native or 'LF'.
Just commit the file with unix line endings, it's correct from the
start, no need to think how this will end up when checking out from
Windows.


- executable
I had forgotten about that one until I checked the subversion doc..
The executable I added in r26760 without setting any property just
worked fine for everybody, so 'executable' has no use here.


- mime-type
This one might be useful for ViewVC web interface, to show images in
the web browser (or so I was told), but UsingSVN advises to use
application/octet-stream for binary files.
So what's the use?


- keywords (Id)
That one really serves no purpose, if you need to know the history of a
file just use svn/git log/blame.
It *might* save a few keystrokes if you don't want to leave your editor
to see who/when was the last commit, but then it doesn't tell you if
the commit was just about whitespace change or some other cosmetics.

Out of 4353 text files in trunk, only 2558 have "$Id$" in them, I don't
know how much of them have the svn:keywords property set to "Id".

Beside this uselessness, it also causes harm when the expanded keyword
is present in patches.
I don't know how/why but it does happen.

> I think that not knowing how to set them or forgetting about them is
> normal and acceptable every now and then, but I don't think wilfully
> ignoring our conventions about them is something we should tolerate.

The keywords property really bothers me, but I can live with it.
And I have no problem with the other ones being present as they aren't
used in my checkout anyway.

If you do want to use them, then just do it, but I won't because it's
just wasting my time for no practical use.


I could continue to pretend forgetting about them, but it would be
nicer if we just remove these constraints about setting properties from
our conventions, or just indicate them as a hint and not a requirement.



Note that if there is a way to automate setting of properties then I
sure will set this up if it makes your life easier, and mine not harder.

Just tell me exactly what to put in .subversion/config , I don't even
want to spend time on something which is IMO broken by design.
I'll let you do the work on this.

-- 
Rafaël Carré

Received on 2010-06-13