Question

I checked out the code for FirefoxExtensionAddOn from Subversion, using "svn co", as suggested in SubversionReadme. Because I happened to update CVS during the migration to Subversion, I knew that the svn version would not be up to date, so I ran a recursive diff to compare the download from svn with my local version of the CVS files. There were lots of errors from files which had never been updated since they were added. When I had a closer look, file lengths had changed. When I dumped them with "od -c", it looked as if all the line endings had been changed by replacing CR-newline ( \r\n) with newline (\n). This applied not only to text files, but e.g. to some gif and png files, which were consequently unviewable.

Question 1: is this real corruption in svn, or did something go wrong during the download, analogous to what Microsoft FTP does to line endings, only in reverse? When I browse

http://svn.twiki.org:8181/svn/twiki/branches/DEVELOP/twikiplugins/FirefoxExtensionAddOn/chrome/skin/classic/twiki/

it looks as if the corruption is in svn, as various gifs and pngs are unviewable.

Question 2: assuming the corruption is actually in svn, what can I do about it? I suppose I could just upload correct versions of all the files to svn, but (a) this would be fair amount of finnicky work, which I would rather not do, and (b) it rather destroys the idea of a good historical backup/record. Also, if other applications have been affected, this may not be just my private problem.

Question 3: Is it possible to remigrate the FirefoxExtensionAddOn code from CVS to svn, and if so, how do I do it?

Question 4: Can I continue to update code in CVS until my svn problem is resolved, or is CVS about to be phased out?

Environment

-- NigelGreen - 18 Oct 2005

Answer

Q1. I can verify that the .png's are corrupt in my svn working copy as well, so yes it does appear the repository version is broken. I spot checked some .png's from other plugin directories and the only ones which appear broken are for the FF addon.

Q2&3. It is pretty straight forward to just overwrite the existing svn version with the current cvs one: svn checkout twikiplugins/FirefoxExtensionAddOn; copy the existing cvs version overtop (excepting CVS directories), then svn commit the changes.

Q4. Yes you can continue to use CVS. The danger is that over time it will get harder and harder to track changes in the mainline. You won't have much if any "drive-by patching" from other developers.

This is logged as bug Item789. I overwrote the svn copy with the cvs one and committed it. Please check it out and make sure it works for you. If it does I encourage you to get SVN access yourself (PluginsInSubversion).

-- MattWilkie - 29 Oct 2005