Painful Fail: Compare With Branch...

Hello Ian,

This is a known limitation. Feel free to vote for http://www.jetbrains.net/jira/browse/IDEADEV-37888
and watch it to get notified when the problem is resolved.

Trunk is here:

http://svn.foo.com/svn/foobar/trunk/foobar

My branch

http://svn.foo.com/svn/foobar/developers/ian/respo_refactor

I right-click on the file tab then pick "Subversion" -> "Compare with
Branch"

An alpha looking pop-up appears with selections for "trunk" "branches"
"tags" and "ian".

I choose "ian", then "respo_refactoring (6/23/09)"

I get an error "Couldn't find repository location for file
'C:\Documents and
Settings\ian\Projects\foobar-working\foobar\src\com\foo\data\RespoMana
ger.java' under branch
'http://svn.foo.com/svn/foobar/developers/ian/respo_refactoring'"

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Ian

---
Original message URL:
http://www.jetbrains.net/devnet/message/5240691#5240691

--
Dmitry Jemerov
Development Lead
JetBrains, Inc.
http://www.jetbrains.com/
"Develop with Pleasure!"

Well, so by "known limitation" do you mean "'Compare with Branch' is utterly and completely broken"?  Or is there some workaround?

Thanks!

--ian

Ah, ok I just read the JIRA report.

I think that JIRA report fundamentally misunderstands the nature of SVN branches, though, to say, "You should be able to compare with a branch that's *two* folders down from the "branches" folder. 

The repo organizational structure in SVN is intended to be arbitrary, as they say in the intro do the docs.  If IDEA is looking in a folder called "branches/", it's broken never mind the ability to drill down one more folder.

Thanks!

--ian

Hello Ian,

Ah, ok I just read the JIRA report.

I think that JIRA report fundamentally misunderstands the nature of
SVN branches, though, to say, "You should be able to compare with a
branch that's two folders down from the "branches" folder.

The repo organizational structure in SVN is intended to be arbitrary,
as they say in the intro do the docs. If IDEA is looking in a folder
called "branches/", it's broken never mind the ability to drill down
one more folder.

Note that "Compare with Branch" was designed as a quick & easy shortcut for
comparing branches in projects which have a canonical structure. It was never
designed to handle arbitrary branching structures.

If you want to compare arbitrary portions of your SVN tree, you can do so:
Version Control | Browser Subversion Repository, add your repository, right-click
a directory to compare, select "Compare With..." from the context menu, select
another directory.

--
Dmitry Jemerov
Development Lead
JetBrains, Inc.
http://www.jetbrains.com/
"Develop with Pleasure!"

Excellent!  Thanks, that's very helpful...

Best,

Ian

Just an FYI for anyone looking for something similar, it's pretty easy to do this on the command line w/ an SVN client (once you know the syntax):

svn diff --old=http://svn.foo.com/svn/foobar/developers/ian/respo_refactoring \

--new=http://svn.foo.com/svn/foobar/trunk/foobar \

src/com/foobar/external/dao/WidgetDaoImpl.java

--ian