Branko Čibej wrote on Tue, Oct 18, 2016 at 13:08:37 +0200: > It is. I don't think there's any way we can /not/ make it backwards > incompatible, given the current implementation. Which is why I think we > should just admit that current behaviour is a bug. > > Either that, or introduce a new property that behaves sensibly.
Some IRC discussion lead us to svn_prop_name_is_valid(), which requires that the first character of a property name be alphabetic or colon or underscore. Brane therefore proposes «*.txt == propname=propval» for the "override" syntax, and keep «*.txt = propname=propval» for the "overlay" syntax. This change would be backwards compatible: this syntax does not have a meaning currently. 1.9 clients just ignore it. We can bikeshed about finding a syntax that looks less like a C comparison, of course. We can't use =: because property names can start with a colon, we can't use := because filename patterns can end with a colon, but any other option is open.
