Changes are getting clobbered when working on remote svn files

We have a mixed development environment (Mac, Win, Linux).
We have an SVN 1.6 repo on the LAN (Ubuntu server 10.04 LTS).
We have a development server on the LAN (Ubuntu server 10.04 LTS).
(I don't think any of the hardware or software matters in this case, but
here it is anyway)

Most of us are running fully-local checkout working copies, editing hosts
file, NameVirtualHost on, using Netbeans, Textmate (Mac), Notepad++ on Win.

One of our developers "A" is storing his working copy checked out onto the
dev server and uses netbeans FTP to work on the files.

What we found is that he is somehow able to overwrite newer files in the
repository if he edits the same file.

In other words, if developer "B" changes file x/y.php at -r 400 and dev "A"
has checked out and is working on file x/y.php at -r 395 then when dev "A"
commits x/y.php at -r 405 it does not include "B"'s changes from -r 400.

We are guessing that either:
- he didn't svn up on the dev server; (claims he always does, of course)
- he didn't 'refresh folder' to grab the latest stuff from his
checkout/update
- he has a "local cached copy" he downloaded from the dev server to edit -
and somehow his IDE (NetBeans 6.9) is not realizing that the remote files
have changed.

or some combination thereof.

One would assume that remote server development and version control would
have been sorted out long ago and developer "A" should be getting a conflict
on commit, or a merge event at commit time, but this isn't the case.

What we now believe is that:

When saving to a remote project, FTP is overwriting the file, even if it has
been svn updated manually, and upon commit, it just sees the ftp-overwritten
file as the newest regardless of the change at -r 400.

I thought I would send this to the list to see if others have experienced
similar issues; and as a warning to look out for this scenario.

Cheers -
Geoff
Received on 2011-09-01 20:52:43 CEST