Is Subversion’s ‘Lazy Copy’ still lazy when overwriting a previously deleted file?
I store my externals in a separate folder for each version: i.e say for dojo I’d have:
webroot\
scripts\
dojo-v-1.0.0\
dojo-v-1.1.0\
etc.
By doing this, for me at least, I feel it makes it easier to switch over to a new version.
By only adding each new version i am not really giving svn the history it needs to do lazy copies. So one tactic I have used is to
- svn copy over the old version over to
where the new one will be - then svn
delete that whole folder - then unpack my newer version into that place
- then svn add them
The idea is to avoid having a massive amount of duplicated data in my repo.
I hope svn is looking at the new files and saying,
“hey, i already had this once, copied, then deleted…so i am going to be lazy and only store the changes”.
That was my theory – but does that happen in practice?
p.s. Yes I know an alternative is to set the ‘externals properties on the folder’ – but that’s another question.
You should read the chapter “vendor branches” in subversion book, because this is exactly what they are about.
To answer your question:
No, subversion will not use a lazy copy on new added files in your described scenario.
If you want to avoid this, use load_dirs.pl (which is also described in vendor branches chapter)