[Webkit-unassigned] [Bug 17394] large svn tree, mostly tests

[bugzilla-daemon at webkit.org]

http://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17394





------- Comment #4 from alp at atoker.com  2008-02-21 16:40 PDT -------
(In reply to comment #3)
> My 2¢:
> 
> 1.  It's possible to check out part of an SVN tree.  You can pull down WebCore
> and JavaScriptCore and WebKit and WebKitTools individually w/o getting any of
> the rest of the stuff.

SVN doesn't deal with this situation. If you try using a partial checkout
you'll see how svn up etc. break down rapidly because of the pathological
layout.

There are two approaches for developers to track SVN without doing a full
checkout:

1) A shell script that has built in replacements for svn up, svn diff etc.
specifically for the WebKit project (ie. it checks out GNUmakefile.am,
configure.ac etc. individually and hashes and updates them from SVN). This
didn't work well when new sources were added at the root and was becoming a
support headache.

2) Debian's filtered git repository [1]. This is also flaky and doesn't solve
the problem fully and can't be used to dcommit. It also means we have to teach
people how to use git who would otherwise never need it.

[1] http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-webkit/upstream.git;a=shortlog;h=filtered

> 2.  It's impossible to do any sort of web engine hacking w/o lots of really
> good tests.

Not really relevant here. This bug is about making things easier for WebKit
porters and users. People who use the tests will be able to check them out and
use them the same as ever after improving SVN layout.

We depend on community contributions for things like documentation, testing on
different architectures and platforms we don't have access to and clearly from
the feedback, they're just giving up or using stale tarballs right now. This is
becoming a major issue for projects experimenting with WebKit.


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