RE: Checksum failure: serious problem or not?

[Jim.Hyslop]

ajrijnberg [mailto:address@hidden wrote:
> I sometimes get the following error message when running "cvs up":
> cvs update: checksum failure after patch to some_dir/some_file.c; will
> refetch
> 
> Is this serious? It seems that, after the update, the file in 
> particular
> is correct...
> What is the reason for this message?
It's nothing to be concerned about.

When you updated the file, to save time CVS tried to apply a patch to your
existing file to update it, rather than retrieve the whole thing from the
repository. After CVS applied the patch, it calculated a checksum on the
file, and compared it with the checksum the file is supposed to have. The
two checksums did not match, so CVS scrapped the patched file and just
retrieved the whole thing from the repository.

In theory, this error should never happen, but as a wise person once said,
"the difference between theory and practise is bigger in practise than in
theory" :=)

-- 
Jim Hyslop 
Senior Software Designer 
Leitch Technology International Inc. (<http://www.leitch.com/>) 
Columnist, C/C++ Users Journal (<http://www.cuj.com/experts>)