Thanks Stefan, excellent answer. > It was basically assumed that users would easily grok the UI > because a "copy" is a simple concept that's also known to > people who haven't used version control before. > However, when you also do advanced stuff like merging you > need to understand how to use the copy operation appropriately.
Yes... I see that some of the UIs are trying to disambiguate branches from copies, by instance restricting choices for the source of a merge to those copies that are antecedents or have mergeinfo or something (the collabnet eclipse plugin). This seems like a good direction. (Something for Tortoise maybe?) > Users need to be aware of branches and use merge to transfer > changes between them. So the new files should be merged from > the other branch, not copied. > And ideally all merges such happen at branch roots (just like > in any other version control system). Yes... Our "SubCop" refuses to allow merges that didn't happen at the branch root. > But doing copy operations within a branch root (i.e. they > don't cross branch boundaries) is fine. Is a copy, as opposed to a rename/move really fine? I'm not sure why people would want two files in the same branch to share a common history. In this case, what I believe happens is that people svn copy an existing class (or whatever) as the basis of a new class, when a filesystem copy and Add might be more appropriate. Anyway, I think this process is indicative of other problems in the development lifecycle. > the version control needs of the next decade would be (recall > that the designers of Subversion were coming from CVS). Today > we know what most people need. And because Subversion was > made flexible it's entirely possible to use Subversion in a > way that's very pleasent *if* you know what not to do. > You've run into one of these cases... Yes. It makes sense. I read that "subversion always assumes the user knows what they're doing". Unfortunately that doesn't hold true in the real world (at least the corporate world). Cheers, jamie =============================================================================== Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer: http://www.credit-suisse.com/legal/en/disclaimer_email_ib.html ===============================================================================
