From: "Joshua J. Kugler" <jkugler@...>
Date: 2005-04-13T10:46:45+09:00
Subject: Re: Accessing SVN through Ruby

On Tuesday 12 April 2005 05:33, Bob Aman said something like:
> The requirement of having to be able to modify the metadata.  I
> assume there's no way to modify the metadata in place through the
> client.  If there is, then that very nearly settles it, I think. 
> (Only thing left to deal with is my irrational apprehention every
> time I shell out for something.  Plus my reservations about needing
> to have Subversion installed.)
<SNIP>
> So I guess my question now is, can the svn client modify the metadata
> in place without writing to disk, or is a checkout necessary?  Same
> question for the stuff I'm able to do via the SWIG bindings or the
> mythical DL?  This is really the most important part to me I think.
>
> Since it appears that there's actually no svn client libraries
> packaged with svn, (presumably because the functionality is entirely
> within svn.exe?) then perhaps to use DL magic, I have to compile the
> SWIG stuff and then stick _that_ in the DL?  Can I get all of the
> resultant DL's (since SWIG seems to generate multiple libraries?) to
> package up nicely into one gem without much hassle?

I don't know how much reading of the svn manual you have done 
<http://svnbook.red-bean.com/> because it explains very clearly how to 
edit metadeta with the svn client and the svnadmin tools.  It also 
explains (IIRC) about the client libraries (but I could be wrong on 
that).  See <http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.1/ch08.html>, especially 
the section about "Using the API."

> And is there any way to use the svn client to work directly with the
> repository in the way I want?  If not, how would you manage a
> reasonably large multi-user system with lots of different things
> being worked on, probably in some kind of temp directory?  Because
> right now I'm envisioning that kind of thing getting out of control
> really fast.

You can specify where you check out, but checking out to memory might 
require some interesting proramming.  If it is via a web client, 
though, checking out to memory wouldn't work as the memory would go 
away when the script ended.

j----- k-----

-- 
Joshua J. Kugler -- Fairbanks, Alaska -- ICQ#:13706295
Every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess, in heaven, on earth, and 
under the earth, that Jesus Christ is LORD -- Count on it!