[osg-users] Change of svn:externals breaks version 2.3.6 (tag)

[Paul Melis]

Robert Osfield wrote:

>Hi Renit,
>
>On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 1:36 PM, Reint Boer Iwema
><rboeriwema at virtualproteins.com> wrote:
>  
>
>> The change of svn:externals seems to have broken the 2.3.6 (tag)
>> version. On check-out I get the following error:
>>
>> External: D:\OpenSceneGraph\2.3.6\include\OpenThreads
>> Error: URL
>> 'http://www.openscenegraph.org/svn/osg/OpenThreads/trunk/include/OpenThreads'
>> doesn't exist
>>
>> Can you change the external URL in version 2.3.6?
>>    
>>
>
>Argghg.... I made a change to the externals on svn head of both
>OpenThreads & OpenSceneGraph, and I'm afraid the external properties
>in the tags of OpenSceneGraph still refer to OpenThreads/trunk which
>is why suddenly you have problems.
>
>Using SVN to access any of the 1.9.x onward tags will exhibit this
>problem too so we'll need to have a think about how best to update the
>tags so the svn:externals property is updated to a specific
>OpenThreads tag.
>  
>
Not sure if you mean tag or revision here, but in any case, the chapter 
on svn:externals in the Subversion book
(http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.4/svn.advanced.externals.html) mentions

"You should seriously consider using explicit revision numbers in all of 
your externals definitions. Doing so means that you get to decide when 
to pull down a different snapshot of external information, and exactly 
which snapshot to pull. Besides avoiding the surprise of getting changes 
to third-party repositories that you might not have any control over, 
using explicit revision numbers also means that as you backdate your 
working copy to a previous revision, your externals definitions will 
also revert to the way they looked in that previous revision, which in 
turn means that the external working copies will be updated to match 
they way /they/ looked back when your repository was at that previous 
revision. For software projects, this could be the difference between a 
successful and a failed build of an older snapshot of your complex 
codebase."

Paul