Re: Checksum failure: serious problem or not?

[Larry Jones]

Eric Siegerman writes:
> 
> Hmm, what would it take to convince you? :-)

A whole bunch of people to agree (vociferously) with you.

> I strongly agree with Jim.  Some more thoughts on how it could be
> improved:
>   - Saving the user's file as .# backup is the least it should
>     do.  Better would be to abort the update, leaving the user's
>     file unchanged.
> 
>   - Best of all would be to fall back to a merge instead of to
>     the current overwrite.  This wins because it reduces the case
>     to one the user is already familiar with -- saving the .#
>     file falls out transparently (from the user's point of view;
>     I don't know about the code's), and the error message can
>     probably be eliminated after all.
> 
>   - Local mode should offer the same level of protection as does
>     client/server.  (Even though the proximate reason that the
>     error is detected in client/server (failed patch attempt)
>     doesn't apply to local mode, the underlying error condition
>     is just as severe, and just as worthy of action by either the
>     user or by CVS.)

Feel free to submit patches.  The tricky part is that it's the *client*
that detects the problem.  The client doesn't have sufficient
information to do a merge (merges happen on the server), and there is no
client in local mode to do the detecting.  There are lots of "can't
happen" error messages in CVS, this one just happens to actually go and
occur from time to time.  :-)  (But it's still very rare.)

-Larry Jones

I don't think that question was very hypothetical at all. -- Calvin