Question

I'm running a TWiki on Windows/Apache/modperl for several years now. It has been working great. We use the TWikiRelease01Dec2001.

Now I'd like to upgrade to TWikiRelease02Sep2004.

Fighting with RCS, I came accross something very strange in the source format of topics of my old Twiki :

• in txt files
  • META lines end with CRLF
  • topic lines end with CR+CRLF (yes twice "CR" !)
• in txt,v files
  • all RCS related lines end with LF
  • all other lines follow the strange scheme above minus the first CR :
    • META lines end with LF
    • Topic lines end with CRLF

Again, this TWiki runs perfectly for years now.

But, of course, when I try to read those topics with the latest TWiki release, this isn't without consequences.

Edit/save using RcsLite :

• txt files get fully (and correctly) translated with LFs everywhere.
• the latest revision in txt,v is now in synch with the txt file. (that was not the case before)
• Consequence : the whole topic appears to have changed in the diffs.
• subsequent edits seem to run ok.

Edit/Save using RcsWrap :

• I can really comment on this since I have other (corruption) issues with RCS that probably come in the way (see RCSWrapCorruptsMyTopicsHistory).

My questions :

• What could have caused this ?
• How to fix my old topics
  • in a 100% fullproof manner ?(I don't want to overlook something and introduce errors one will notice in days from now)
  • without impacting history for users ? (I don't want that big "changed" in diff encompassing the whole topic)

I'll appreciate any help. Thanks.

Environment

-- JeromeBouvattier - 15 Sep 2005

Answer

If you answer a question - or someone answered one of your questions - please remember to edit the page and set the status to answered. The status selector is below the edit box.

Have you checked the WindowsInstallCookbook, where it talks about mounting files in binary mode? If the new release is on a different system, that might have something to do with it.

-- RichardDonkin - 15 Sep 2005

Thanks for you help Richard.

Since I used modperl, I don't use Cygwin at all. I guess the "mounting" thing only relates to cygwin right ?

I use ActivePerl. The RCS distrib I used for that old Twiki was coming from ftp://ftp.leo.org/pub/comp/os/os2/leo/devtools/gnu/. Could that RCS flavor be the culprit ?

The mixed EOLs exist on the running TWiki. So, the new system is out of question so far. Or I did not understand you correctly.

-- JeromeBouvattier - 15 Sep 2005

I'm thinking to

• replace \r\r\n with \n
• and then to replace \r\n with \n

So far, it "seems" to work ok and the next saves to not introduce changes that encompass whole topics' content as mentionned above.

Could the experts tell me whether there is some risk with the manipulation above that I might have overlooked ?

TIA.

-- JeromeBouvattier - 16 Sep 2005

I don't think so, but it's hard to be sure. TWiki generally tries to ignore \r when it comes across it.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 21 Sep 2005

Now that I've found a solution to the RCSWrapCorruptsMyTopicsHistory issue, I noticed RcsWrap, although it turns any EOL into LF, like RcsLite, also ignores changing line endings in its output, unlike RcsLite. I think that will be less risky for a solution, since I don't have to temper with the txt,v files.

-- JeromeBouvattier - 21 Sep 2005