Re: [RFC] requiring Perl SVN libraries for git-svn

[Seth Falcon <sethfalcon@gmail.com>]

Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net> writes:
> Are there any git-svn users out there who would be seriously hurt if I
> dropped support for using the svn command-line client in git-svn?
>
> The API of the SVN:: libraries seem to be relatively stable these days
> and are *much* faster than the command-line client.  I plan on
> maintaining compatibility with version 1.1 of the SVN libraries for at
> least another year; or more if it's not a big problem.

I've been using the SVN:: libraries and agree that that they work well
(and faster).  One downside I see is that the svn command-line stuff
will Just Work for a lot of folks, whereas obtaining or building svn's
Perl bindings can be more of a chore [*1*].

OTOH, using git-svn via the svn CLI is slow and much less fun than
with SVN::.  So I can also see an additional argument to drop so that
people's first impression of git-svn won't be, "gaah, slow" -- because
with the SVN:: libs, my experience has been, "yaah, much faster!" :-)

My $0.02.

+ seth


[*1*] I asked our sysadmin to install the Perl libraries on one of our
new servers and although they seem to be installed, they are
non-functional.  git-svn stiffles the error messages, but a simple
script that just tries to require SVN::Core gives:

    Can't load
    '/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/x86_64-linux-thread-multi/auto/SVN/_Core/_Core.so'
    for module SVN::_Core:
    /usr/local/src/subversion-1.4.2/subversion/libsvn_ra_dav/.libs/libsvn_ra_dav-1.so.0:
    undefined symbol: PKCS12_SAFEBAG_free at
    /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/x86_64-linux-thread-multi/DynaLoader.pm line 230.

Anyone else seen this?  I guess that if you drop the svn command-line
support, that it would then make sense to error out with more complete