Re: Export behaving badly

Daniel Berlin wrote:

>On Mon, 2005-10-17 at 15:46 +0200, Branko Čibej wrote:
>  
>
>>Daniel Berlin wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>So i'm converting over some documentation update scripts from gcc.
>>>
>>>They do the following:
>>>
>>>Export a bunch of doc files from repo
>>>build docs
>>>place them somewhere
>>>
>>>export, unfortunately, behaves differently than checkout.  If you do
>>>
>>>svn export svn://gcc.gnu.org/svn/trunk/gcc/doc/install.texi gcc
>>> 
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>I think export should simply fail for a single file, just like checkout. 
>>    
>>
>
>Checkout fails because it can't currently maintain a working copy
>alongside the single file
>
>Export doesn't fail because it doesn't need such a working copy.
>
>Why put restrictions on export that doesn't need to be there?
>We actually want to remove this checkout restriction, not propagate it
>to other things.
>
>  
>
>>We have "svn cat" for that.
>>    
>>
>
>By this argument, svn export is completely useless. You could make the
>directory structure on your own and cat into it one file at a time.
>
>Should we remove export because we have "cat for that", and instead tell
>people to script the equivalent?
>  
>
Oh come on. :)

I'm merely suggesting that the solution to "export a single file" should 
be the same as the solution to "checkout a single file".

In other words, if someone takes the time to teach export to create a 
directory and put a single file in it, then we might as well do 
something similar for checkout (fixing co -N first, of course). Until 
then, I'd rather have export behave like checkout; if for no other 
reason than it's easier to explain export as "checkout without creating 
the .svn directories".

-- Brane