Re: [boost] Why I hate subversion

From: Eric Niebler (eric_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-03-25 03:45:20

Ulrich Eckhardt wrote:
> On Tuesday 25 March 2008 01:16:21 Eric Niebler wrote:
>>   U   boost/indirect_reference.hpp
>>   U   boost/parameter.hpp
>> svn: In directory 'boost'
>> svn: Can't move 'boost/.svn/tmp/foreach.hpp.2.tmp' to
>> 'boost/foreach.hpp': Permission denied
> 
> There are two common reasons for that:
> 1. The file is open (under win32) and herefore you can't write it.
> 2. The permissions are actually wrong.
> 
> Both involves obvious solutions, but the second one is typically the result of 
> using different user accounts to access the same working copy. The first one 
> can also be caused by anti-virus software.

Probably the former. I don't have a virus checker installed, but it's 
likely that my editor had an open handle to this file.

>> ericne_at_ericne-xps ~/boost/org/trunk
>> $ svn up
>> svn: Checksum mismatch for
>> 'boost/.svn/text-base/enable_shared_from_this.hpp.svn-base'; recorded:
>> '12d8c5183a709a7699c13b312073c36c', actual:
>> 'c89a6b23045ff8c89d2de74213d1649a'
> 
> The typical cause is that some (broken) tool modified the content of the .svn 
> dir, like e.g. search'n'replace running amok. Since the files in there have a 
> different ending and are even write-protected, I'm actually willing to write 
> this off to a broken tool.
> 
> I have also seen this happen dues to some filesystem-level corruption which 
> made it impossible to access some dir. Running an extensive check/repair 
> fixed that though.

In case it wasn't clear from my message, I executed these commands one 
after the other. "svn up" with the permission failure. "svn up" 
immediately thereafter with the corruption. It seems clear to me that 
the failure of the first command led to the corruption of my subversion 
repository. There is no filesystem corruption ... just subversion 
borking itself. And like I said, it's not the first time.

>> Does this ever happen to anybody else? I get this random corruption of
>> my local subversion repository about once a month.
> 
> That's a lot. Up to now, I have still been able to trace all issues to either 
> misuse (by user or tool), misbehaving virus scanner or (as above) filesystem 
> corruption.

No misuse, and no tool other than subversion. FWIW, I'm running 
subversion via cygwin on vista. Is this just the price of doing business 
on windows?

"Permission denied!"
More subversion corruption.
Another day lost.

-- 
Eric Niebler
Boost Consulting
www.boost-consulting.com