Loosing changes in Flare and SVN

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rkirkhart
Propeller Head
Posts: 23
Joined: Thu Nov 12, 2009 8:07 am

Loosing changes in Flare and SVN

Post by rkirkhart »

Flare 7, Apache SVN

We found that we loose changes in a unique scenario where the prompts from the Flare error messages are misleading. After we experienced this a few times, we caught on and we try to watch more carefully. Here's how it goes.

Bob and Roger are editing the same topic (Version 50) simultaniously. (Sure it happens, even if we sit next to each other.)
Bob finishes, saves, and checks in his changes. (Version 51)
Roger finishes later, saves and checks in his changes - Flare wisely warns us - "No files checked in due to conflicting changes".

Two choices - hit "Resolve" or hit "Auto Merge" seem like valid choices. In this unique case - We both changed the H1 - so automerge won't work - but we DIDN'T KNOW THAT. :shock: So, we hit AutoMerge. Again Flare wisely tells us "Resolving Conflicts. Backup File Created" Hit OK.

Here's the kicker = Next message says "All Files Merged Successfully" - :evil: Ugh - UNTRUE. It kept Roger's copy and Bob's copy is still in SVN.

Next message says "No files Checked In due to initial conflicts" - don't you feel like saying "What! Did you just tell me we merged successfully!"

At this point, Roger can accidentally OVERWRITE Bob's changes by simply doing the CheckIn step again. That's right - if Roger tries to check in his working copy a SECOND time, all will go well - it will check in and become version 52 and - Bob will be mad :x when he sees his changes missing.

There may be better ideas about getting around this, but for now, we are watching what changed by using the merge tool to manually resolve the issues whenever possible.

Hope you can follow this. Good luck out there.
Roger (Bob's friend)
Paul Griffiths
Sr. Propeller Head
Posts: 261
Joined: Wed Apr 18, 2007 2:25 am
Location: Nottingham, UK

Re: Loosing changes in Flare and SVN

Post by Paul Griffiths »

We also found that it was possible to overwrite content in Subversion, and immediately reported a bug. Since then, we have been using Tortoise as our Subversion client and will return to Flare only when MadCap can demonstrate that they have fixed this.
aforsyth
Jr. Propeller Head
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Sep 29, 2010 7:13 am

Re: Loosing changes in Flare and SVN

Post by aforsyth »

Yes - I think we are all finding these kind of issues with the Flare / SVN integration. I wrote a list of the more significant issues I've so far found in a post in this forum:
http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... 718#p72350
The majority of these points have already been reported and acknowledged as issues by MadCap Support. There is apparently a forthcoming Beta version with fixes coming up in the next few months (MadCap did not say when precisely). They offered me the chance to be sign up to be a Beta tester, which I accepted (having a maintenance license may be a pre-requirement for this option, I don't know).

Using TortoiseSVN entirely for source control is probably the most dependable solution at the moment, as suggested. Although simple non-conflict operations (check in / check out / get latest version) do usually work, they are far slower than TortoiseSVN, and can end up with .NET exception errors ('object doesn't exist', etc.) if the Flare internal cache is not correctly synced (trying to add / check-in a read-only file, etc.).

Can't wait for the Beta :-)
Alan
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