On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 01:40:01PM +0000, [email protected] wrote: > Hi Stefan, > > I do hear you. I also question whether RSync, or something, is > truly a good option for Windows users for pulling files from a > repository. Do you know Windows users that use RSync happily? I > fully appreciate that Linux users are happy with RSync. I tried to > find the 2nd product which was suggested on the user list, RoboSync, > as a better option for Windows users, and it seems to have fallen > off the map of realistic options. I could not find a home page or > recent release of it. Do you know how many people use the client > side of SVN on Windows versus Linux or Mac? Is the Windows user > base really small? Or is it more an svn dev policy never to add a > feature that isn't really cross-platform. I guess I could accept > that as a basis for your decision, that makes some sense. Obviously > thinking out loud here.
We do add platform-specific features where they make sense. My argument was that the design of the feature as proposed is not general enough to be generally useful to lots of our users. I don't know if there is interest in providing a feature for svn export which allows exclusions of files from the export based on user-definable criteria (which could include files size). Such a feature might stand a better chance, but would be significantly more work to accomplish. And it's best to start off new features with a design document that can be discussed with the community before any code is written. That helps avoid writing code which will later be rejected by the community. And it will usually help improve the design of the feature, too. > I wasn't sure how many decision makers would vote on this patch, and > whether the responses on the users list were indicative of a final > decision. Is everyone against this? We're working on a basis of lazy consensus. That means that if nobody sends replies opposing my view, we can assume that the community accepts my view. Note though that since everyone is in different time zones, and a lot of people work on other things besides Subversion, replies can come in later than one might expect. In this case though, I'd like to explicitly ask any readers who have silently been following the thread to voice their opinion, especially if they differ with my view. Maybe that way we'll find out what the community at large is thinking about this? And we'll also find out whether anyone else is actually listening to this conversion :) > Last clarification: the advantage over rsync is that you don't have > to install or learn rsync. Maybe improving the situation for rsync on windows would be effort well spent. Even just asking communities who have been working on rsync ports for windows for their status might help. Cheers, Stefan
