[cvsnt] Disappearing Repository Files

Merrill Cornish merrill.cornish at earthlink.net
Thu Mar 17 20:41:19 GMT 2005


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I am running a WinCVS 1.3.20.3 client against a Linux CVS repository.  I don't know whether the problem I had is related to WinCVS, to the CVSNT that WinCVS uses, or to the Linux CVS repository.

At one point, I realized that one of my repository directories was poorly named.  I know better than to try to convince CVS to rename things, so I 

* created a new directory with the correct name, 
* added the new direcotry to CVS,
* copied the files from the old directory to the new directory,
* added those newly copied files to the repository and committed them.

All appeared well.

I had to modify some of the files in the new directory, so some of the files had revisions of 1.1, some 1.2, and a few 1.3.

All appeared well.

When it came time to send a copy of this source tree to someone else, I first made sure that all changes in the source tree had been committed to the repository.  In particular, I used WinCVS's flat view, then click on the buttons to do things like "Show all committable files."  The view remained empty, implying to me that the local source tree being shown to me by WinCVS was in perfect sync with the repository.

However, when I checkout the source tree to another location, that new directory I had created showed up in the source tree, but it was empty.

I went back to my original source tree in WinCVS, but it still said it was in sync and the files were there.  I did an Update on the entire original source tree.  No change in the new directory WinCVS claimed was populated but the new checkout said was emtpy.  I did an Update, Get Clean Copy.  Still no change in the new directory as seen by the original WinCVS.

Our CVS Administrator checked the Linux CVS repository.  The new directory was there (just as WinCVS said it was), but that directory in the repository contained no files (just as the second checkout had claimed).  Furthermore, that directory had nothing in its Attic, implying that it had _never_ had any files in it.  I don't have administrator privileges, so I don't/can't do anything WinCVS won't do for me.

He checked the CVS directories in the original checked out source tree (the one claiming the directory had files in it), but everybody was correctly pointing to the same repository.  By the way: we have only one CVS repository.  There are no private copies lying around anyplace.

Remember, the original source tree as seen by WinCVS correctly showed that not only were the files there, but that several of them had been modified and re-committed one or two times.

I finally gave up trying to figure out what was wrong.  I went to the second checked out source tree (the one with the empty directory), and re-added, then re-committed the files in question (they are graphics files, so their history was not of interest to me).

Any idea what happened?

Merrill





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