Re: Subversion Exception svn_relpath_is_canonical in ra_loader.c

On Thu, May 2, 2019 at 10:34 AM Johan Corveleyn <jcorvel_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Apr 30, 2019 at 9:28 PM Eliot, Christopher
> <christopher.eliot_at_nagrastar.com> wrote:
> > I am not subscribed to this mailing list. If you need to reach me, please CC me explicitly at christopher.eliot_at_nagrastar.com
>
> Hi Christopher,
>
> > Running TortoiseSVN1.10 (r28148).
> >
> > Accessing SVN repository as https://ndev-svn01/svn/...
> >
> > TortoiseSVN had been running for a long time, I had done lots of things in it.
> > I right-clicked on a tag and selected "Mark for comparison"
> > I clicked on the trunk.
> > Can't recall if I clicked "compare URLs" or not.
> >
> > Ooh. This is repeatable. I shut down TortoiseSVN complete and restarted it.
> > Performed the same sequence of events; I get this same exception when I click on
> > "compare URLs". I reproduced it a couple of times.
> >
> > I then selected the trunk and marked it for comparison, selected the tag, and
> > was able to to compare them just fine.
> >
> > I then went back and repeated the original sequence of events and again got the
> > exception.
>
> Thanks for taking the time to report this.
>
> However, I'm afraid this community (the "core" subversion project)
> can't help you directly. I think it's likely that this problem is
> situated somewhere in the TortoiseSVN code (which is a separate
> project, for the Windows GUI on top of the Subversion libraries). It
> seems it is internally calling the Subversion libraries with a
> "non-canonical path". Maybe there is something strange with the urls
> that are constructed here?
>
> If you report this to the TortoiseSVN community
> (https://tortoisesvn.net/community.html), they might be able to
> provide more help or to ask more specific questions to find out what's
> going on.
>
> > I'll look into updating TortoisSVN.
> >
> > When I update to 1.12, it’s unusable. When I click on the directory for my project, I get a popup that just says “TortoisesSVN client has stopped working. A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Please close the program.” It seems to be a problem with just this project; I can click down into other projects in the same repository. I’ll report that separately.
>
> Here again I think you should probably contact the TSVN community. It
> might be related to the first problem (some non-canonical url being
> passed to the libraries, specific to that one project). Or it might be
> something else.
>
> > ---------------------------
> > Subversion Exception!
> > ---------------------------
> > Subversion encountered a serious problem.
> > Please take the time to report this on the Subversion mailing list
> > with as much information as possible about what
> > you were trying to do.
> > But please first search the mailing list archives for the error message
> > to avoid reporting the same problem repeatedly.
> > You can find the mailing list archives at
> > https://subversion.apache.org/mailing-lists.html
> >
> > Subversion reported the following
> > (you can copy the content of this dialog
> > to the clipboard using Ctrl-C):
> >
> > In file
> > 'D:\Development\SVN\Releases\TortoiseSVN-1.10.0\ext\subversion\subversion\libsvn_ra\ra_loader.c'
> > line 629: assertion failed (svn_relpath_is_canonical(path))
> > ---------------------------
> > OK
> >
> > Topher Eliot

Hi devs,

I'm afraid I've done it again: replied to a user report of an
"svn_relpath_is_canonical" assertion (crashing TortoiseSVN) by asking
the OP to report it to TSVN. Maybe this is not ideal (sorry Stefan),
but I don't know what else to do with reports like that. So after a
couple of days of non-response I try to help by giving at least "some
option to move things along".

Can we do better? I know this has been asked before (most recently
last December [1]), but we stumbled somewhere along the way as far as
I can see. I know this is a sensitive area prone to "finger-pointing",
but IMHO we should keep on trying :-).

Some things that came out of that discussion last December:

1) Brane committed new canonicalization functions in r1848943 [2].
What's the status of those? Are they being used by TSVN now, and
perhaps part of TSVN 1.12 (thus explaining the different crash that OP
observed with TSVN 1.12)?

Also: Julian ran some "random input tests" on those new functions [3],
bringing a couple of things to light. Not sure whether those things
were all addressed. AFAICS Julian's tests were not committed.

2) I asked about adding the actual path on which the assert is failing
to the error message, to help troubleshooting. Julian sent a patch for
discussion [4], but concerns were raised about users inadvertently
leaking sensitive info with their error reports. It seems that
discussion got a bit stuck, and nothing was committed.

3) The bigger issue was also raised [5]: "We should not be doing abort
from a library". That discussion got stuck too, AFAICS. Maybe it
should be revisited (again) ...

Realistically, I won't hold my breath for point (3), as long as we're
on 1.x. But I would be overjoyed if we could make further progress
with (1) and (2).

[1] https://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2018-12/0080.shtml
[2] http://svn.apache.org/r1848943 (some further discussion starts at:
https://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2018-12/0108.shtml)
[3] https://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2018-12/0111.shtml
[4] https://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2018-12/0090.shtml
[5] https://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2018-12/0096.shtml

-- 
Johan