Bloody TortoiseSVN

[Desktop Gaming]

For the love of Christ.

Last week I lost my website backup because TortoiseSVN refused to commit any further updates - something about a folder was missing in the repository.

Now, I've lost my current project backup because of TortoiseSVN - that's twice its fecked up in as many weeks - anybody else have problems with this?

Commit Failed
File not found: transaction '0-1' path 'game/mapeditor/maped.bmx'

(that being the only file I'm trying to commit to the repository).

I can't keep arsing about with this. Is there some way to stop of fecking up, or failing that, a viable alternative backup solution? TortoiseSVN has worked fine up until recently - my game backup is at revision 46 and I never had an issue with it until now.

[moose6912]

It could be temperamental. I have had issues with Tortoise SVN where I had connection errors that went away after I attempted to connect again for a second time. Same applies for SVN update and SVN commit, but I am sticking with it until I can find a better alternative. My previous project has about 500+ revisions and it worked fine. Somehow it seems to work better when it is running on a Windows server compared to a Linux box.

[Desktop Gaming]

I just checked the repo browser. Absolutely everything in the HEAD revision is flagged as 'deleted', as it was when my website backup screwed up. Yet all the paths are as they were last time when it worked. Change one file and BAM! Gone.

I think I'll go back to the old-fashioned way of doing it (manually copying folders). At least I don't lose any work/hair/sanity that way. :rolleyes:

[Bad Sector]

Probably something in your local copy (the stuff in the .svn dirs) is damaged or -for whatever reason- out of sync with the repository.

The sanest solution is to check out the latest version from your repository to a new fresh folder and move the files you modified there. Then just commit that directory and forget about the old one.

This happened to me when i accidentally modified a file in .svn and hell broke loose. After i while i figured out that my working copy is just a "working copy" and not something sacred i cannot delete, forget about or whatever :-).

[Diragor]

In case one of these applies to your situation:

- File names in svn are case sensitive but the Windows file system is not. If you change the case of file names in a project and check them in you'll cause some problems.

- The documentation strongly warns against directly accessing a svn repository located on a network shared directory. If it's not on a local hard drive, you should be using a real Subversion server and connecting with a svn:// or http:// URL.

That first one is the only problem I've personally experienced with Subversion (with most clients using TortoiseSVN) over several years and thousands of commits. FWIW, we're running the bundled svn server on a Windows 2000 machine.

[Mattias Gustavsson]

I think I'll go back to the old-fashioned way of doing it (manually copying folders).

If you do, give Second Copy (http://www.centered.com) a go, it's nice :-)

[Desktop Gaming]

I haven't manually changed any files in the repository, and I haven't renamed any files in my project either. My repository is stored on a USB external hard drive and its *always* my F: drive when its on. I wonder if Vista might be weaving its black magic behind the scenes and scuppering it?

I might have a look at Second Copy, provided it lets ME choose when to run a backup. Don't like things that do it for me, but I DO need a backup solution I can trust and rely on. Right now, TortoiseSVN is not "it".

[edit] I might put my external hard drive back in a 3.5" bay on an IDE channel, see if I still get issues with it. Although I don't see any reason for it to not work on an external drive.

[mot]

Never had any trouble with this, after thousands of commits to various projects, all using TortoiseSVN as the client.

This is a direct file access to the repository? Try accessing the repository over a different protocol, svn:// or http://. If you already have Apache it should be easy to set up.

Also, directly modifying files in the repository is obviously stupid, but modifying the files in the .svn directories in the *working copy* is just as. When moving directories around be sure to either use something that will tell Subversion about the operation or delete all the .svn directories inside the one you're moving. Otherwise, such operations can really wreak havoc.

[Desktop Gaming]

Yeah I'm using the file:// protocol - didn't really look into anything else as I just wanted something that was easy to set up. Didn't fancy mucking about with apache.

Haven't modified anything at all in the .svn hidden folders.

[Diragor]

Regarding folder backup/copy apps, I always liked Cobain Backup when I worked primarily in Windows. It's flexible, powerful and free. It can do scheduled backups or manually invoked copies. I used it for nightly incremental backups.

[Scharlo]

For the love of Christ.

Last week I lost my website backup because TortoiseSVN refused to commit any further updates - something about a folder was missing in the repository.

Now, I've lost my current project backup because of TortoiseSVN - that's twice its fecked up in as many weeks - anybody else have problems with this?



Finished 30+ projects using SVN, some of them 15+ people submitting stuff regularly, never a single problem with it.

[mot]

Haven't modified anything at all in the .svn hidden folders.

And you didn't move any directories around? Not in the .svn dirs, but any directory inside the working copy. That's the only way I know of that can confuse Subversion.

WorkingCopy\dir1
WorkingCopy\dir2

use Explorer to move dir2 into dir1, Commit ==> Error

[oNyx]

Using versioning isn't a backup strategy on its own. You really should do backups of the repository as well.

Google for hot-backup.py it's a little script which allows you to do so called "hot backups" of the repository. It also allows you to keep X older backups around. I'm using the default-ish value of 10 for example. So, if it happens to backup some broken repo, it won't really hurt much, because I can use an older backup then.

[Dan MacDonald]

Been using CVS and SVN for years, never personally had a problem with it. I have had people around me have issues, but it's generally user error on inexperience.

I suspect it has something to do with the USB harddrive as the repository, did you remove the drive safely? If not it's possible to corrupt the filesystem. The only external media you can really yank is the Flash drives.

[Bad Sector]

The only external media you can really yank is the Flash drives.

Not really, once i lost a bunch of files i downloaded from a cybercafe in a flash drive because i forgot to "safely remove" the drive.

[Indiepath]

I just got subversion setup on a ubuntu box with a post-commit hook to update liveservers etc. Works very well, simple to connect to from a host of clients and simple to backup. I have no idea why I've not implemented this before!

[GolfHacker]

Indiepath: I've been needing to do this myself. Any good tutorials or resources you can point me to for implementing this?

[Indiepath]

I cribbed from here : http://www.howtoforge.com/apache_subversion_repository_p2

However it won't work straight off the bat since they forget to tell you to install some extra modules!!

Use the following command before you begin :
apt-get install subversion libapache2-svn
also when creating the working copy you must switch users to the apache user, the example user is "apache" but with a normal ubuntu install the user will be "www-data". I skipped all the authentication piece so that any user on the local network can use SVN.

A great bit of backup software is backuppc - it has a great webbased front end but alas won't work without some tweaking : http://kirksblog.steffensenfamily.com/archives/10

[Bad Sector]

the example user is "apache" but with a normal ubuntu install the user will be "www-data"

This is true for Debian too.

[Oaf]

Has anyone else had the problem with Tortoise, where if you commit a large file (say a few mb), every other network app (msn etc) loses their connection?

I can upload fine using ftp, http, and ssh but I think TSVN is doing something naughty....

[Stefan Maton]

If you do, give Second Copy (http://www.centered.com) a go, it's nice :-)

I'm using Winmerge (http://winmerge.org/) for this. It doesn't only compare files but also can compare entire directories. I've a network drive to which I shuffle my stuff.

[svero]

I've been using tortoise and subversion for over a year now and never had any problems like this. I don't really rely much on the history etc.. though. And my server auto-backs up nightly. I don't know that I'd trust ANYTHING as a single point src or data repo.

[MrPhil]

I've been using it for years, as well, with zero problems. I make it easy on myself and pay CVSDude.com to host my server and take care of it. I gives me piece of mind, well worth the ~$200 a year without a doubt.

[lppee]

sounds pretty good, but have no experiece