> Mark Phippard wrote: >> [...] For an update, I think it is unexpected and undesirable. [...]
I had a talk with Karl about this, and now I understand the concern much better. (Karl, please correct anything I misrepresent.) He shares the view that it would be unacceptable for 'svn update' to fetch pristines of files that have become locally modified since the previous fetch opportunity, but that are not actually being updated by this update. In his use cases a developer locally modifies some large files. The developer also modifies some small files (such as 'readme' files describing the large files). The developer doesn't need to diff or revert the large files, and so chooses the checkout mode which doesn't keep the pristines initially. Before committing, the developer runs 'update', expecting to fetch any remote changes to the small files (and not large files, not in this case), expecting it to be quick, and then the developer continues work and eventually commits. The time taken to fetch the pristines of the large, modified files would be long (for example, ten minutes). Taking a long time for the commit is acceptable because the commit is the end of the work flow (and the developer can go away or move on to something else while it proceeds). The concern is that taking a long time at the update stage would be too disruptive. It wouldn't be a problem for an operation that really needs the pristines taking a long time. (Revert, for example.) The perception is that update doesn't really need them. That is, while it obviously needs in principle to fetch the new pristines of the files that need updating to a new version from the server (or fetch a delta and so be able to generate the pristine), it doesn't, in principle, need pristines of files that it isn't going to update. In this use case, it isn't going to update the large, locally modified files. And fetching their pristines wouldn't massively benefit the commit either, because they are poorly diffable kinds of files. So it is wasted time. If the implementation currently requires these pristines, that would seem to be an implementation detail and we would seek to change that. So my task now is to investigate for any way we can eliminate or optimise the unnecessary fetching, at least in this specific case. Filed as https://subversion.apache.org/issue/4892 . I will investigate this issue next week. - Julian
