Yesterday I was pleased to notice that we had gained an "svnadmin
build-repcache" command in 1.14, thanks to Denis Kovalchuk of VisualSVN.
https://subversion.apache.org/docs/release-notes/1.14#svnadmin-build-repcache
https://svn.apache.org/r1875921
To an inexperienced svn admin, this feels like the kind of procedure
that falls in the "repository repair" category, of procedures that are
not necessarily safe to run unless one knows the intimate details of how
it all works.
An administrator needs to know in particular whether they must stop the
server before running this. It isn't stated in the help or the release
notes. An explicit statement would help.
Looking at the code, I see it calls svn_repos_open3() which, according
to its doc string, blocks until any exclusive lock is gone and then
acquires a shared lock on the repo. That sounds to me like it's safe to
run on a "live" repo.
Do I read that right?
Index: subversion/svnadmin/svnadmin.c
===================================================================
--- subversion/svnadmin/svnadmin.c (revision 1915904)
+++ subversion/svnadmin/svnadmin.c (working copy)
@@ -311,8 +311,12 @@
"usage: svnadmin build-repcache REPOS_PATH [-r LOWER[:UPPER]]\n"
"\n"), N_(
"Add missing entries to the representation cache for the repository\n"
"at REPOS_PATH. Process data in revisions LOWER through UPPER.\n"
"If no revision arguments are given, process all revisions. If only\n"
"LOWER revision argument is given, process only that single
revision.\n"
+ "\n"), N_(
+ "This is safe to run on a repository that is in use. It holds a
shared\n"
+ "lock while it runs, blocking commits. It may hold the lock for a\n"
+ "considerable time. It is safe to interrupt and run again.\n"
)},
{'r', 'q', 'M'} },
Would this wording be useful and correct?
Then I found myself wondering the same question about all the other
svnadmin commands. Without tracing all the code, it "feels" to me like
this is the common pattern used in svnadmin and so probably the same or
similar statements apply to most or all of its subcommands. Does anyone
want to check the facts, or express an opinion about whether we should
update all the help strings or if we can add a single statement in
"svnadmin help" that covers all of them?
- Julian
--
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