Question

I'm attempting to post a second revision to a .gif (binary) file. I get the error message below.

The pub/WCTravel/AccountingSystemModel/Accounting_PaymentcentricClassDiagram1.gif,v file has expand @b@, so it's a binary revision file.

I've installed GNU diffutils. According to the PATH I've setup, RCS ci should be using the GNU diff, not Solaris diff.

I noticed that the live file (pub/WCTravel/AccountingSystemModel/Accounting_PaymentcentricClassDiagram1.gif) gets updated, but the =Accounting_PaymentcentricClassDiagram1.gif,v file does not have a 1.2 revision.

Topic save error

During save of file WCTravel.AccountingSystemModel an error was found by the version control system. Please notify your TWiki administrator.

/usr/local/cm/app/local/bin/ci -q -l -m'Payment centric class diagram' -t-none -w'KurtStephens' /usr/local/cm/app/twiki/pub/WCTravel/AccountingSystemModel/Accounting_PaymentcentricClassDiagram1.gif 2>&1
Binary files /tmp/dL5aaih and /tmp/T2e5a4hh differ
ci: /usr/local/cm/app/twiki/pub/WCTravel/AccountingSystemModel/Accounting_PaymentcentricClassDiagram1.gif,v: diff failed
ci aborted

Go back in your browser and save your changes locally.

Environment

-- KurtStephens - 31 Jul 2003

Answer

The answer is in BinaryFileProblem, BinaryFilesDifferMessage, SaveErrorWhenAttachingBinaryFile.

-- PeterThoeny - 31 Jul 2003

Solution

Somehow I did not find those three topics when I searched. First time using the Support wiki.

My problem was due to an RCS/diff mismatch.

The ./configure script in the rcs-5.7 distribution does not check that the diff it magically selects actually works with binary files; it selects /usr/ucb/diff program by default on on Solaris 5.7.

If you're building your own versions of GNU diffutils and RCS, and want to force RCS to use your build of GNU diffutils, do this:

# Assume you are building for $HOME/local
PREFIX="$HOME/local"

mkdir -p "$PREFIX/"{bin,lib,include}

# Assume you unpacked the diffutils-*.tar.gz here
cd diffutils-*
./configure --prefix="$PREFIX"
make install
cd ..

# Assume you unpacked the rcs-*.tar.gz here
cd rcs-*
DIFF="$PREFIX/bin/diff" DIFF3="$PREFIX/bin/diff3" ./configure --prefix="$PREFIX"
make install
cd ..

Should this solution be added to TWikiDocumentation TWiki Installation Guide?

-- KurtStephens - 31 Jul 2003

I've added a pointer to this solution to TWikiOnSolaris, since this is platform specific. Similar issues seem to exist on Unixes other than the *BSD ones, and Linux. This is linked from TWikiOn, which is linked from the TWikiInstallationGuide.

-- RichardDonkin - 01 Aug 2003

I had some similar issues with implementation on SunOS 5.7 (SunOS is9.gennum.com 5.7 Generic_106541-27 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-4). I had to download both rcs-5.7 and diffutils-2.8.1 from the sun software site and also do one other step for the environment variables (using csh) before:

setenv SDIFF "$PREFIX/bin/sdiff"
./configure --prefix="$PREFIX/local"

I now have binary file updating working.

Thank you

-- AndrewCervinLawry - 10 Mar 2004

Thanks for the tip - it's best to update TWikiOnSolaris so that this information can be found easily.

-- RichardDonkin - 11 Mar 2004