Bug#356900: automatic keyword un-expansion on 'svn {ps,pd,pe} svn:keywords'?

[kfogel at collab.net]

Julian Foad <julianfoad at btopenworld.com> writes:
> I'll just mention a few points.
> 
> When a user asks Subversion to stop handling a keyword,
> 
>   * some will want to remove the entire keyword from the text;
> 
>   * some will want to keep the last expanded value as ordinary versioned text;
> 
>   * some will want to keep an empty, contracted keyword placeholder in the text.
> 
> The first requires manual editing, and that's fine.  Of the second and
> third, do we have a hope of guessing which is more common?
> 
> Is it "svn diff" that we should be fixing, rather than "propdel"?
> 
> Consider the dangers of modifying a file while it might be open in a
> user's editor.  The same dangers apply to "update", "merge", etc., so
> it's "just" a matter of user education, but text changes caused by a
> property command is a new phenomenon.
> 
> If we are going to contract the keyword, consider doing it at commit
> time rather than at prop-change time, as that would avoid the
> text-change problem. (Do what, exactly?  Contract the set of keywords
> that is the union of base and working prop values?)
> 
> More thought required.

Hmmm.  What you say makes me think that showing a "local mod" (the
still-expanded keyword) after the propdel might be at least as useful
as automatically contracting the keyword.  And showing the local mod
alerts the user that there's a conscious decision to be made here.

My (mild) inclination is to stay with status quo now.  The diff may be
annoying, but at least it's not a silent change.