SVN: August 2009 Archives

If you’re lazy, like me, you commit your changes using svn commit -m "my awesome bug free code is done". This is easy and fast, but does not work if your software project has a machine specific configuration file, or something else that when committed causes other people pain.

SVN has no direct solution to this problem, but you can abuse the changelist feature to solve the problem. Simply create a changelist for these files and never commit it.

svn changelist donotcommit configurationfile1.xml configurationfile2.xml

You can confirm that this has worked with svn stat. Once the changeset is crated, it should look something like this:

bobdole@/svn/foo_project$  svn stat
M       changedcode.c
?       project.log

--- Changelist 'donotcommit':
        configurationfile1.xml
        configurationfile2.xml

Now you can go ahead and use svn commit -m "i fixed everything" again without living in fear of terrible office pranks being committed against you.

CVSDude, you suck.

CVSDude, the hosting provider that I’m currently using for Subversion, has been down all day. Since we’re an active development team, this has caused some very serious problems.

The worst part of the problem is that I cannot get a word from them. Their status blog entry seems to downplay it as a minor issue, but it’s far from that. They haven’t replied to my support requests that I sent in early this morning making it very hard for me to mitigate the damage. If they can’t take the time even to send a bulk reply, I really question their reliability as a whole. I do not feel that my source code is safe any longer.

If they haven’t replied to my email by the time I go home, I’ll have to stop by their office in Palo Alto to see what’s up.