A little amendment to svn book

Ben Collins-Sussman sussman at red-bean.com
Mon Nov 20 08:48:46 CST 2006


On 11/18/06, Flemming Bjerke <flem at bjerke.dk> wrote:
> I suggest that you add following sentence to the section "Repository Backup":
>
> --------------
> Please, check that the path to svnlook and svnadmin in the Global Settings
> section of hot-backup.py are correct.
> --------------
>
> That phrase would have save us an hour.


In general, I'd like to see that section of the book tweaked in a more
general way.  The book seems to place hot-backup.py on some sort of
pedestal, proclaiming it the 'official way to back up your
repository'.  As a result, what I've seen over and over is users
treating the script like some sort of sacred black-box.  Nobody looks
inside to see what it's actually doing, and it seems like the majority
of users don't even know that 'svnadmin hotcopy' command exists!
People run the script and expect it to just magically work, and even
file bug reports on it.  That script shouldn't be occupying so much
mindshare.

I think the book should *first* introduce the idea of 'svnadmin
hotcopy', and *then* say, "by the way, here's a convenience script
that will manage a collection of backups for you, feel free to read it
and tweak it to your needs."




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