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RE: SVN 1.5.3 and possible data loss_52591

From: Andrew Lucas <andrew.lucas_at_l-3com.com>
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:05:45 -0500

This might be a red herring as I haven't done any controlled test cases, but I noticed that one has to be very careful about copying / mixing the .svn hidden folder trees. If you have a user that copies the .svn folders from place to place, maybe they are grabbing old copies and mixing them into the current tree?
Say you update your tree, then copy parts of an old .svn tree on top of it. You've just corrupted your .svn tree. I'm not talking just the source files, but the hidden directories used by .svn for repository management and control. You might be confusing svn into thinking the file was updated when it wasn't due to the overwrite.
Could one of your users be doing something like that by accident?

-----Original Message-----
From: john.jones.sk6_at_gmail.com [mailto:john.jones.sk6_at_gmail.com] On Behalf Of John Jones
Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2009 6:44 AM
To: users_at_subversion.tigris.org
Subject: Re: SVN 1.5.3 and possible data loss_52591

Hi,

Thank you everyone who replied to this enquiry. Lots of interesting
points. And no smoke indicating 1.5.3 is the culprit.

The outside editor changes and overwrites we covered in our review of
work flow and it didn't come up as the culprit. Plus, the culture
here is not one of blame and shame so I have no reason to believe this
took place.

Merge is not an issue either, we have a single trunk, so unless there
is some common code that is used in updating a file that is wonky it
is hard to make a connection.

Sometimes these things remain a mystery.

John

---------------------------------
John Jones
UK: (+44) (0)797 644-3043

"Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle
them, and pretty soon you have a dozen."
John Steinbeck

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 1:32 PM, Andy Levy<andy.levy_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 08:23, Vincent Lefevre<vincent+svn_at_vinc17.org> wrote:
>> On 2009-08-12 11:01:15 +0100, Stefan Sperling wrote:
>>> Yes. Editors that simply ignore and overwrite concurrent file
>>> modifications made by other tools (such as Subversion) are no fun.
>>> So make sure your developers are using editors that handle this
>>> gracefully, or have them exit their editor before running svn update.
>>
>> Yes, but this isn't sufficient. I suspect that some users do
>> the following:
>>  1. Copy the file somewhere else (e.g. on a USB key).
>>  2. Do some "off-line" editing. And when they come back:
>>  3. Do "svn up".
>>  4. Copy the edited file to the working copy (with "cp").
>>
>> (Now I wonder whether a Subversion aware "cp" should be provided,
>> to warn the user against possible damage if the destination is a
>> versioned file.)
>
> But what guarantees that the user will use this version?
>
> There's only so far any software can go in protecting the user from
> himself. At some point, the user has to be held accountable for the
> commands he issues & workflow he uses.
>

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Received on 2009-08-14 16:06:59 CEST

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