Any way to avoid repeatedly fetching files from SVN?

[Mojca Miklavec]

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 1:26 PM, Joshua Root wrote:
> On 2013-1-21 21:23 , Mojca Miklavec wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> When trying to write a new Portfile for some software whose sources
>> are fetched from SVN (I was working on a port for Root 6) I realised
>> that 480 MB of sources need to be fetched for every single tiny change
>> in the Portfile (which is a bit problematic when I'm not working on a
>> super-fast network). I can do it once, but I cannot afford to fetch it
>> for every single option that I want to try out.
>
> Well, the best option is not to fetch from a VCS if at all possible.

I'm aware of that, but in this case SVN is the only option. (In the
meantime I've found a github mirror and I'll probably use that one as
a temporary workaround.)

> The
> sources don't get mirrored, among other issues. Even if the sources are
> only available through a VCS, you can always export a tarball.
>
>> Is there any way or interest to optimise this? I'm not sure how, but
>> some (possibly bad) ideas:
>> a) doing a checkout to the same location where tar.gz files would
>> normally be stored
>> ($HOME/.macports/opt/local/var/macports/distfiles/...), and making
>> sure that the repository is clean next time when we try to use it (use
>> "svn status" or other tricks to make sure that no files are deleted or
>> changed); when changing the revision this would also mean
>> significantly less traffic
>
> This is <https://trac.macports.org/ticket/16373>.

(Almost) perfect, thank you very much for the pointer. That describes
my problem and a possible solution exactly.
(Almost = because it's not implemented yet.)

>> b) making sure that timestamps during checkout are set to commit times
>> (not checkout times), tar-gziping the contents and doing some kind of
>> checksum on the resulting file (if checksum doesn't depend on the time
>> when tar.gz is made)
>
> I don't really understand what you're proposing here.

Just making a tar.gz file out of checked-out sources and store that
one. I'm sorry for the confusing description, but it doesn't really
matter what I wanted to suggest since the other option to keep a
repository checkout would be much better.

Mojca