[Buildbot-devel] Behavior expected from SVN master side source step

[Saurabh Kumar]

Hello,

I am a new contributor and I was trying to fix ticket number 2066[1],
where I tried to make the behavior of master-side source steps consistent.

The current SVN step uses two types of URLs to specify the repository
url, repourl and baseURL. Their current behavior is documented in [2].
The repourl ignores branch specified as the defaultBranch argument or
specified in the source step, while the baseURL allows for a branch
placeholder to specify how branches exist in the svn filesystem.
It became apparent that all this work can be done by just one URL, with
the cost of breaking backward compatibility.

I have added a patch[3] that just deprecates baseURL, and allows only
specifying repourl. The branch_placeholder %%BRANCH%%, is now specified
in the repourl itself. The commit breaks the option of specifying
baseURL, and also now the repourl no longer ignores branch information,
especially from the source stamp.
This allows us to elegantly use just one URL.

The alternatives to this new behavior are:
-To keep the current behavior intact.
-To use the new behavior, while allowing baseURL with deprecation
warnings, which is sensible.
-To use one url, while allowing for more configuration to specify what
action should be taken be done with the branch.

I discussed this issue with Tom, and both of us have not used SVN much,
so this new behavior may miss out on corner cases, or may not be what
users expect from repourl, especially if they need branch information
from the source stamp ignored. Any feedback from SVN users would be helpful.


[1]: http://trac.buildbot.net/ticket/2066
[2]:
http://buildbot.net/buildbot/docs/0.8.6/manual/cfg-buildsteps.html?highlight=source%20steps#svn
[3]: https://github.com/buildbot/buildbot/pull/371