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Re: SVN Branch Description Format

From
ASAndrew Sayers <andrew-git@pileofstuff.org>
Date
Mar 19, 2012, 01:28 UTC
Message-ID
<4F668BCD.3010306@pileofstuff.org>
In-Reply-To
<7B2F5CA7-F2C1-483A-9913-B19A14AA9101@gmail.com>
On 18/03/12 23:18, Steven Michalske wrote:
Show 6 quoted lines
> Consider .SVN_BDF or .SVN.BDF instead of .BDF
> 
> I worry about a branch or tag containing a "
> Can subversion contain a "?
> 
> Steve

I had a look into valid paths during the week, but hadn't checked quote marks specifically. Thankfully it seems to work:

mkdir test_dir cd test_dir svnadmin create repo mkdir checkout svn checkout file://$(pwd)/repo/ checkout/ cd checkout/ mkdir '"' svn ci -m 'Created directory "'

I'll add this to the test suite :)

Of course, it wouldn't do for SVN to make things that simple. [1] seems to be the official definition of what a valid path looks like, and I've skipped over some important requirements in the spec. Most importantly, redundant '/'s are allowed at the end of a path, and multiple '/'s are collapsed down to one in SVN, so it seems prudent to import that little eccentricity into this format.

I could be persuaded about making '.svn-bdf' the recommended extension, but I'd also be happy to go with a more TLA-friendly name for the whole thing. "SVN Branch Format" would lend itself neatly to a three-letter extension (.sbf) that doesn't appear in Wikipedia's list of file formats[2], although it still encourages the RAS syndrome[3] I've repeatedly stumbled over while writing the spec. "SVN Branching Language" might work, and unlike "BDF" or "SBF", "SBL" doesn't sound at all like "PDF" when mumbled indistinctly. Alternative suggestions are welcome, with the obvious proviso that this is largely subjective and I'm going to pick whatever sounds best to my ear :)

I'm approaching a natural break in defining the format, so I'll paste a new version next week. After that I'll probably pause the format and work on the SVN exporter for a bit, so I'll have a structure to continue building the tests and reference implementation against.

	- Andrew

[1]http://subversion.apache.org/docs/api/latest/group__svn__fs__directories.html#details [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_file_formats [3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAS_syndrome

Previous: Steven MichalskeNext: Andrew Sayers
Message 3 of 10 in “SVN Branch Description Format”
  1. Andrew SayersMar 11, 2012
  2. Steven MichalskeMar 18, 2012
  3. Andrew SayersMar 19, 2012
  4. Licensing a file format (was Re: SVN Branch Description Format)Andrew Sayers, Mar 19, 2012
  5. Jonathan NiederMar 19, 2012
  6. Andrew SayersMar 19, 2012
  7. Jeff KingMar 20, 2012
  8. SVN Branching Language (was Re: SVN Branch Description Format)Andrew Sayers, Mar 23, 2012
  9. Ramkumar RamachandraMar 30, 2012
  10. Andrew SayersMar 31, 2012

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