On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 12:14:27PM +0100, Tom Ghyselinck wrote: > Hi everybody, > > I am following this feature with a lot of interest! > > One question pops up: > 1. Suppose I have a branch "B" with external references to "E" > 2. "E" has an external reference to "F" > > When I copy "B" to "C" with --pin-externals, then > 1. The external reference "E" will be pinned to e.g. "E@999". > 2. I suppose "Within" the repository/branch "E", "F" won't be pinned to > "F@888" > > Is this correct? > > I understand this is not what subversion wants/can do since > "E" may be in another repository where you don't have access to. > But this *does limit* the use-cases of the --pin-externals.
Are you asking if external descriptions within repositories pointed to by externals will be pinned (recursively)? If so, the answer is no because there is no commit made to other repositories externals point to. The copy can only modify externals properties that are part of the tree being copied. Generally, if you rely on this kind of indirection, I think you're stretching the use case of this feature far beyond what it was designed for. For example, it was never meant to be a full-blown "dependency manager" for source code components even though some SVN users tend to (unwisely) use it for such purposes. There are other tools which were designed for this kind of thing. Apache Maven comes to mind, but there are others outside the Java world.
