Subject: Re: [PATCH/RFC] Add support for subversion dump format v3

From: Jonathan Nieder <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2010 21:24:15 -0500

David Barr wrote:

> This series follows Jonathan Nieder's svn diff applier series.
>
> Patches 1 to 4 add the required infrastructure to fast-import.
> The primary feature is the addition of the cat-file command to
> fast-import. This allows access to objects written to the
> the current pack prior to a checkpoint and is critical to
> retrieving full-texts to drive the diff applier.
>
> Patch 5 adds the basic parsing necessary to process the v3 format.
>
> Patch 6 adds logic around decoding prop deltas.
>
> Patch 7 integrates svn-fe with svn-da to decode text deltas.
> It was primarily authored by Jonathan but inspired by Ram and
> completed by myself.
> This is probably the most sprawling of the series and likely the
> heaviest target of review.

Just wanted to say: thank you for working on this.  The code
(especially on the fast-import side) needs some pruning and the result
needs tests, but in the end, we are not far from an svn-fe that can
work with "svnrdump dump" output.

In case someone is feeling generous, here is a wishlist:

 - simplify the interface or add a wrapper script so callers do not
   have to use mkfifo

 - keep track of whether an error was encountered and exit nonzero
   in that case

 - rely on git to fetch old revisions (for copyfrom_rev etc) and stop
   keeping track of them in svn-fe.  This would simplify svn-fe a lot
   and pave the way for:

 - incremental imports (since no state has to persist)

And for the sake of tests:

 - a simple delta producer (the remote helper would need this to
   drive "svnrdump load", anyway)

 - clarification (sharpening) of the notes/svndiff and
   notes/dump-load-format.txt specs in Subversion