[Zope-dev] Subversion externals versus mirroring

[Martijn Faassen]

Hi there,

Christian Theune wrote:
> a long-standing issue with our mirror of svn.zope.org are the absolute
> URLs of externals: they require the repository to be available on a
> given URL.
> 
> I propose to use relative URLs for externals. I guess a complete update
> isn't necessary, but I'd like to improve the situation and start using
> them from now on. Maybe we should also put a commit hook in place as a
> safety belt?
> 
> However, this requires Subversion 1.5 which we are using on the server
> already, but I don't know whether we assume clients are 1.5 or higher.

I certainly still use a SVN 1.4.x client, being on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS 
(released just last year). I don't think SVN 1.5 is common enough yet to 
make such a move possible.

> As a side effect this will also make svn/svn+ssh work in a nicer way
> (IMHO) as the externals will follow the protocol of what you used for
> checkout.

That's definitely cool; keeps tripping me up when I want to check into 
an external. Usually I use externals when I'm developing multiple things 
at once...

So, I don't think it's time yet, but I do support this on the longer 
term. We could record a decision to do this at least for the ZTK in the 
ZTK decisions document. What about mid-next year for requiring 
Subversion 1.5.x? There's nothing against us deciding things well ahead 
of time! A ZTK timeline planning document, anyone?

(Ubuntu should've released a new LTS by then too. :)

Regards,

Martijn