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Re: svn switch problem - cannot switch from ''unclean'' checkout

From: james coleman <jamesc_at_dspsrv.com>
Date: 2007-07-13 02:47:59 CEST

Karl Fogel wrote:
> james coleman <jamesc@dspsrv.com> writes:
>> Here is the text of the FAQ entry I think would work:
>
> Thanks, I think this is worth having in the FAQ. Can you send it to
> dev@ as a patch, using the instructions at
>
> http://subversion.tigris.org/mailing-list-guidelines.html#patches

Thanks Karl, I've been composing my submission for a while now :-P :)
Wondering what mime type Thunderbird will think a .patch is?
Content-Type: text/x-patch; good. :)

>
> See comments below...
>
>> Why doesn't svn switch work in some cases?
>>
>> In some cases where there are unversioned (and maybe ignored) items
>> in the working copy then you can get errors and end up with an
>> unusable working copy. The more complex the changes on branch and trunk
>> the more likely this is. See issue 2505.
>
> If you could provide some examples of local changes that are *not*
> likely to interfere with switch, that would help; adding other
> examples of changes that are likely to interfere would be great too.

I didn't want to delve into detail and confuse people but Hmmm, yes.
Seeing the exact error svn reports might make people searching for it hit the FAQ entry.

One scenario:

If any directory has been moved or renamed between the branches then
anything unversioned in there will cause a problem. A switch requires that the
directory doesn't exist after the switch so what to do with unversioned content?
svn plays it safe and doesn't want to delete it.

This is recoverable from actually, you have a half-switched working copy.
You can rm the directory left behind (now also unversioned without .svn) and
then run the svn switch again.

If multiple things have been renamed the switch will trip up and break on each
one so cleaning unversioned files would help.

wc/$ svn switch $SVNROOT/foobar/branches/br1
wc/$ mkdir foo
wc/$ svn add foo
wc/$ svn ci -m"add dir foo" foo
wc/$ touch foo/unversioned_file
wc/$ svn switch $SVNROOT/foobar/branches/br2
svn: Won't delete locally modified directory '.'
svn: Left locally modified or unversioned files

# to recover:

wc/$ svn status
! .
     S foo.c
~ foo

wc/$ rm -rf foo
wc/$ svn switch

wc/$ svn up
svn: Directory 'foo/.svn' containing working copy admin area is missing

wc/$ svn switch $SVNROOT/foobar/branches/br2
D foo
  U .
Updated to revision 19.

It is the first case listed by bug #2466 though I think.
The error message is confusing and the user did not know what the error was telling them.
The user did an svn revert which then put the working copy in broken state.
It could do with a FAQ entry too:
What does svn switch error "svn: Won't delete locally modified directory '.'" mean?

Actually!

  ............

   Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

I'm wondering is this example all there is to #2505?
A confusing error followed by wrong corrective action then useless working copy.
http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2505

It could be. Both recipies in #2505 and #2466 could have been
recovered from by removing the offending unversioned files and
continuing the svn switch.
And I did not know you could recover like this until starting to investigate this.

Now there could be a nastier issue lurking here.
But after thinking about this so much I'm beginning to think this _could_ be all there
is to the issue.

If so it could be fixed by getting svn to fix error and direct user to rm
all unversioned files and continue the script.
It would be nice if there was a --force or --allow-delete-unversioned or something
which would make svn brutally delete things in the way of a switch.

Actually I'm wrecked and it's 1:30am here so I'm going to collapse to bed. :-7
I could be completely delusional right now so will leave it here for now.

This is taking me a while as I've started testing this more.
I think I'll comment on 2505 about this. Tomorrow.
I'll test and stop cleaning before I svn switch and see if I can recover every time.
  (Two dirty switches I started between branches that had problems before I have
   now recovered from.)

>
> Remember, the reader will be asking themselves "Am I in trouble or
> not?" Anything we can do to help them know the answer to that
> question is good.
>
>> A switch from a pristine clean checkout always works. There are two
>> ways of working if you are using svn switch as part of your development
>> process:
>>
>> 1. Fully clean your working copy of unversioned (including ignored)
>> files before switch.
>> WARNING! This deletes all unversioned dirs/files.
>> Be VERY sure that you do not need anything that will be removed.
>>
>> alias svn-unversioned='svn status --no-ignore | grep "^[I?]" | sed 's/^[I?]//''
>> alias svn-clean-wc='svn-unversioned |xargs rm -rf'
>
> Just show the commands as commands; aliasing mechanisms may differ
> from shell to shell, and some people don't know what aliases are.

Okay.
I also see in contrib/client-side/svn-clean
But it's a good few lines of perl and I'm thinking the simpler the better.
Maybe these one-liners fit in contrib?

>
> -Karl
>

Sheesh. :-7 And thanks Karl.

James.

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Received on Fri Jul 13 02:47:38 2007

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