Using up double diskspace for working copies (Was Re: Detailsforsvn test repository)

[Walter Landry <wlandry at ucsd dot edu>]

Daniel Berlin wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-02-11 at 15:29 +0000, Joern RENNECKE wrote:
> > Daniel Berlin wrote:
> > 
> > >    
> > >
> > >>Because svn keeps an extra pristine copy for checkouts, I'll have to use 
> > >>svn export for
> > >>automatic regression tests.  
> > >>    
> > >>
> > >
> > >I don't understand why.
> > >Is this because of the amount of space the working copy takes up?
> > >  
> > >
> > 
> > Yes.  Sometimes stuff breaks and you don't notice it right away (E.g. 
> > because the
> > feature is not automatically tested, or because of noise from other test 
> > failures).
> > So it is useful to keep several month worth of test builds around.  
> > Doubling the
> > amount of space taken up by this is not acceptable.
> 
> Then you are correct, the only way to do what you want is export, or cp
> excluding the .svn directories.
> Do you consider this a show stopper, or are you willing to export your
> trees?
> Because if it's a show stopper, then so will be arch, monotone, or any
> of our other replacements (they all either store the entire repo on your
> disk, or have stuff in the working copy), and we will be stuck with cvs
> until everyone is happy to use up double/whatever disk.

This is not actually true.  Both ArX and tla support hardlinking the
tree against the extra pristine copy.  In fact, for the use case given
(lots of old test builds), some or all could be linked against each
other.

If you are worried about hard links because you might muck all of your
different versions with careless editing, ArX at least will let you
get away without a pristine tree.  It then builds a new one when
needed, and then deletes it.

Regards,
Walter Landry
wlandry@ucsd.edu