Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Possible to destructively modify an archive?

[Adrian Irving-Beer]

On Wed, Sep 29, 2004 at 08:48:10AM -0500, Rob Browning wrote:

> Imagine you accidentally commit something very large to an archive
> and you want to remove it, or imagine you're legally required to
> remove some project from a large archive.  Are removals possible?

It's generally accepted that you shouldn't 'alter the past' by messing
with an archive, particularly if it's a public archive.

If someone mirrors your changes before you remove them, or checks out
your project, removing and then patching with something different can
step on a lot of toes.  See

        http://wiki.gnuarch.org/moin.cgi/Changing_20History

That being said, I've done this a fair bit on local, private archives
for similar reasons to yours.  If you need to remove an entire
version, branch, or category, just rm -rf it; the archive structure is
fully descending.

If you need to remove a revision, or a range of revisions, it has to
be the last one(s) committed to that version.  Move the ++revision-
lock to the last one you want to keep, and then remove them.

> Along the same lines, is it possible to "export" part of an archive
> and then import that part into some position in another archive?
> While I realize that in the normal case, this probably shouldn't be
> done (or rather should just be done via tagging), I still wondered
> if this was possible.

This one is less clear cut.  I'm not entirely sure what you mean.  But
if you want to transplant a version from archive to archive, it's
equally not recommended.  See

http://wiki.gnuarch.org/moin.cgi/Moving_20project_20between_20Arch_20archives

for information.

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