Re: [PATCH] Explain how svn-fe parses filenames in SVN dumps
- From
- Andrew Sayers <andrew-git@pileofstuff.org>
- Date
- Apr 14, 2012, 17:37 UTC
- Message-ID
- <4F89B5C5.3030606@pileofstuff.org>
- In-Reply-To
- <20120414171431.GA4161@burratino>
On 14/04/12 18:14, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
Show 16 quoted lines
> this description and the location of this description seem quite > misleading. Isn't what the reader needs to know something like the > following? > > BUGS > ---- > Due to limitations in the Subversion dumpfile format, svn-fe > does not support filenames with newlines. Since version 1.2.0, > "svn add" forbids adding such filenames but some historical > repositories contain them. An import can appear to succeed and > produce incorrect results when such pathological filenames are > present. > > Thanks, > Jonathan >
I went back and forth a bit while writing the text. Newlines are only one special case, albeit an important one that I hadn't expressed clearly enough. For example, the handling of NUL characters is worse than newlines (a quick test suggests svn-fe terminates parsing altogether if it sees one), but SVN has never allowed the creation of files with NULs so arguably it's even less important.
I'm warming again to the idea of explicitly mentioning that newlines cause breakage, but it feels like the wider story is worth telling too. If this were a man page I'd consider adding a section or something, but I'm not sure what level of verbosity you're looking for in this file.
- Andrew