Brunning's 1st Law of Source Control: He who checks in first, merges least.
"Source control ate my files!" is a superb post. Spot on - 9 times out of 10, when someone complains about Subversion (or whatever) screwing things up, it can be traced back to fear of updates or commits, or to someone blatting someone else's changes with a blind merge. This last, especially, can always be traced - there's no hiding the truth when history is an open book.
The other time, it's someone trying to revert a revision from a dirty working copy. I've never yet seen the software get it wrong.
But for the love of God, Darren, start running a continuous integration server already!
Posted to Software development by Simon Brunning at November 02, 2007 08:02 PMMost of the time, I agree with you. In my case, however, the software did screw it up.
I would post a link, but your commenting system won't even let me post a plain url (it tells me "Your comment could not be submitted due to questionable content: "). You can google "locking bugs subversion" if you want to see the thread.
Posted by: Bill Mill on November 3, 2007 01:44 AMThere's always one, isn't there. ;-)
You mean this, Bill?
http://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2007-06/0329.shtml
Well, it doesn't surprise me that there are are defects in the dark corners of Subversion. It's software, ipso facto it has bugs. ;-)
But it's still true that I've never come across problems myself that didn't originate between keyboard and chair.
Posted by: Simon on November 3, 2007 12:54 PMThat's the one, alright. The reason it took me so long to get around to fixing it was that I assumed it was PEBCAK, so I didn't ask for help until I was at the end of my rope.
But! As our svn administrator, I've definitely seen the errors you're talking about; they're much less frequent now that we've gotten into good source control habits.
Posted by: Bill Mill on November 3, 2007 05:41 PMSimon: "But for the love of God, Darren..."
Nice of you to encourage Darren in his walk with the Lord.
Posted by: Dave Pinn on November 3, 2007 09:21 PMPurely an idiom, Dave - no genuine belief in any flavour of invisible sky pixie implied. ;-)
Now, back to reading Hitchens' superb "God Is Not Great"...
Posted by: Simon on November 4, 2007 03:24 PMReally? And here's me thinking that God had finally revealed himself to you. I guess not..not yet, anyway. ;-)
Posted by: Dave Pinn on November 4, 2007 11:13 PMNope, keeping himself well hidden. (Shouldn't that be "Himself"?)
Posted by: Simon on November 5, 2007 09:50 AM