[kepler-dev] [Bug 4670] svn update fails to update module with modifications

[bugzilla-daemon at ecoinformatics.org]

http://bugzilla.ecoinformatics.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4670

David Welker <welker4kepler at gmail.com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|ASSIGNED                    |RESOLVED
                 CC|                            |welker4kepler at gmail.com
         Resolution|                            |WONTFIX

--- Comment #2 from David Welker <welker4kepler at gmail.com> 2010-01-15 10:12:19 PST ---
This is not a bug, this is a feature.

The problem that this feature solves is that when you update and there is a
conflict, the build freezes entirely with no feedback or error messages.

The major source of conflicts is local modifications. Of course, local
modifications are a superset of conflicts. That is, sometimes there is no
conflict even though there is a local modification. However, reproducing the
analysis that SVN undergoes to detect conflicts is not feasible, at least in
the short-term. Therefore, detecting modifications is an imperfect proxy.

Basically, what this says is that if you have local modifications, you have to
either check those in or update manually for that module that you are working
on and making local modifications to.

Remember, that "ant update" is a convenience method for updating a bunch of
modules at once, most of which you will not be working on, and thus not
modifying locally. If you are making local modifications and want to update
that module, either use "svn update" or check in your code before using "ant
update."

The only disadvantage here is that assuming that all modifications might be
conflicts is over-inclusive. In fact, most modifications can be merged
automatically by SVN and are not conflicts that need to be manually resolved.
However, the need to use "ant update" which is merely a convenience method that
calls "svn update" on all the modules in modules.txt is not compelling for
modules you are actively modifying locally. The need for using "ant update"
instead of "svn update" for modified modules is very weak, since it is
reasonable to expect developers to manually deal with modules they are actively
working with using "svn update" or "svn ci" either before or after running "ant
update" to get updates from other developers for modules they are not modifying
locally. While there is some cost imposed, since in most cases in fact
modifications would never have turned out to be conflicts, that cost is less
than having the build hang with no feedback whatsoever when a conflict in fact
does occur. The build hanging like that is unacceptable.

I am working on what I hope will be an even better solution. However, in the
meantime, this is the fix that is in place to prevent the build from hanging on
conflicts. I am closing this bug, since the better solution (if it does in fact
turn out to be better) is associated with a different bug.

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