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

[Julian Foad]

Peter Samuelson wrote:
> [Julian Foad]
> 
>>Finally, but importantly, why are we only talking about contracting 
>>keywords?
> 
> We're talking about any change to the svn:keywords property - both
> adding and removing keywords.

The original post on the Subversion dev list did not mention adding, but it's 
good that we are talking about it now.

>  For the add case, libsvn_wc already does
> the right thing and expands keywords in the WC (though at commit time,
> not at propset/propedit time).  Doing it at propset/propedit time is
> probably not worthwhile, since (at least for $Id$) the string will
> change at commit time anyway.
> 
> 
>>Surely, if we expect 'svn' to contract a keyword when we remove its
>>name from the property, we should also expect it to expand it when we
>>insert its name in the property.
> 
> Doesn't that happen today?  Or do you mean doing it immediately rather
> than deferring it to the next commit?

I meant doing it immediately, and I was asking because I thought that's what 
was being proposed for contracting a deleted keyword, but I hope (and it now 
seems) that's not the case.


As far as I can tell, we're pretty much in agreement that the current behaviour 
is right.  The fundamental point is:

   A keyword absent from 'svn:keywords' does NOT mean that Subversion
   should contract it, it means that Subversion should not touch it
   nor even require that it parses syntactically.

So we're left with the lesser question:

   * Should we provide an easy one-step facility to contract and then ignore a 
keyword?

My answer: no, I don't see any good reason for doing so.  I recommend the bug 
report be closed as "fixed", since the definite bug (in diff) noted in the 
original Debian report has been fixed and I don't think further action is required.

- Julian