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Re: Bug? Binary files marked as modified when not touched!

From: Stefan Küng <tortoisesvn_at_gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:34:43 +0200

Ed McDonagh wrote:
> Hi
>
> Along side using subversion on linux for code collaboration, we use
> TortoiseSVN on Windows 2003 for our QA spreadsheets, which are
> predominantly Excel binary files. This works very well in that we have
> the whole archive with us in the field on laptops, and we have revision
> history. All the 'checked-out' copies are on WindowsXP or XP tablet, and
> are all using TortoiseSVN.
>
> The problem is that sometimes various files are marked as modified (red
> exclamation mark) when in fact they haven't been. Sometimes it is

Do they also show up as modified in the commit dialog?

> possible that they are files that were opened for reference, but then
> closed without saving changes. This is not always the case though, and
> there are situations where files have definitely not been touched by the
> user. The 'date modified' provided by the file system suggests they
> haven't been changed.
>
> As they are binary files, one cannot do a diff on them to check what has
> really changed.
>
> This has been occurring 'randomly' since we started using TortoiseSVN
> for this a 18 months ago. It does seem to happen with some PCs/laptops
> and some users more than others.
>
> Is this a known problem? Is the operating system doing something strange
> that is causing the files to look modified to TortoiseSVN?

That depends on the application with which you open the files. Some
applications modify every file when opening, writing some "last viewed"
or "last opened" date string to the files.
If you have such applications: get rid of those. It's a clear indication
that the developers of those apps don't use version control - and I
don't think I have to tell you what that means for the quality of those
apps.

Stefan

-- 
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Received on 2008-07-30 12:35:06 CEST

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