git-svn and empty directories in svn (was: [PATCH 1.2/2 (fixed)] git-svn: fix output reporting from the delta fetcher)

From: Seth Falcon <sethfalcon@gmail.com>
Date: Nov 29, 2006, 16:15 UTC
Message-ID: <m2slg2rzzj.fsf_-_@ziti.fhcrc.org>
In-Reply-To: <20061128201605.GA1369@localdomain>

Hi Eric, and list,

Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net> writes:

Show 15 quoted lines

> Seth Falcon <sethfalcon@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I think that presently git-svn does not create empty dirs when pulling
>> from svn.  It would be nice to have such directories created since
>> some projects will expect the empty dir to be there (no need to track
>> it in git, IMO).
>
> Git itself cannot easily track empty directories (at least as far as
> update-index and checkout) goes.
>
> What I *can* do is run mktree and to force the creation of tree objects
> with a 4b825dc642cb6eb9a060e54bf8d69288fbee4904 (empty) sub tree and run
> commit-tree on it, but checkout/checkout-index would still need to be
> modified to support it.
>
> Is that something the git community wants?

I recently encountered a situation where code wasn't working for me because git-svn didn't create an empty dir that is present in svn.

I'm not trying to argue for the sense/anti-sense of tracking empty dirs in an scm, but I think this is an issue worth addressing in some fashion. Here's why.

I think there are many potential git users out there who are currently svn users. And git-svn is a really nice way to get started, but this sort of stumbling block could really turn people off. For example, it made me look pretty dumb when I carelessly complained to my colleague about his code not working and then it turns out to be because my super-advanced scm tool "messed things up".

One simple thing (I think it would be simple) is that git-svn could issue a loud warning when it encounters an empty directory that it is going to ignore.

I don't understand the implications adding the tracking of empty dirs to git. I suspect it has been discussed before, but haven't yet gone fishing in the list archives. I imagine it would make the argument easier for folks wanting to switch a project from svn to git if this wasn't one of the differences. For good or bad, I've often heard this svn feature as a motivator to switch from cvs.

+ seth