[Gdal-dev] RFC 2: Migration to OSGeo Subversion Repository

[Mateusz Łoskot]

Daniel Morissette wrote:
> Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> 
>> o Doing branches is more intuitive (so I might not be afraid to do
>> so).
>> 
> 
> Is it creating branches or using them that is more intuitive?
> Creating CVS branches is as simple as typing "cvs tag -b..." and I
> never found that confusing myself ... how does SVN do it?

"Creating a branch is very simple—you make a copy of the project in the
repository using the svn copy command. Subversion is not only able to
copy single files, but whole directories as well."
(http://svnbook.red-bean.com/nightly/en/svn.branchmerge.using.html#svn.branchmerge.using.create)

so, in SVN, you just have to use "svn copy" command.

Thus, SVN branches can be considered as less intrusive to the HEAD and
more safe than in CVS - physically separated.

> Does this mean that SVN doesn't use the "$Id: $" keyword by default
> and that any new files will need to have this flag set to it after
> it's been added to the repository?

Yes, it does.
The main reasons of this approach I see are:
- performance - only keywords in marked files are scanned/updated
- you can assign different keywords to single file or group of files

Also, keywords mechanism belongs to more general concept - properties.
You can introduce your own properties, you can assign values of selected
properties per revision, etc.

Here you can find more details:
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/nightly/en/svn.advanced.props.html

Cheers
-- 
Mateusz Łoskot
http://mateusz.loskot.net