Re: Best Practices: How to remove corrupted CVS files?

[Mark D. Baushke]

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Chris Weiss <address@hidden> writes:

> I've been asked to migrate our CVS repository
> over to Subversion (hope that's not a dirty word
> here). 

Not at all. The svn community has lots of roots in CVS
and is considered by many to be a likely successor.

> While running the cvs2svn tool, I got a list of
> a dozen or so files with the error "<filename>
> is not a valid ,v file". These files are
> unrelated and obsolete (most have been abandoned
> or are in the Attic already), so losing them
> completely is not a concern.

Okay.

> There are several modules in the repository, but
> none that cover all of the affected files.

Naturally, that would make things too simple. :-)

> What would be the best way to deal with these
> files? 

Go in an resolve the RCS problems to make the
files be correct... this may require access to
backup tapes in some cases.

> I'm no CVS expert, so maybe I'm missing the
> obvious easy answer...

Corruption of the RCS files is non-trivial in any
case.

> Option 1 - Manually delete the files from the
> folders in the repository from the shell.

I would suggest you try to avoid this approach if
possible. You could just create a 'copy' of the
repository for purposes of import that excludes
these problem files, but it would really be a good
idea to salvage as much as possible from those
files.

> Option 2 - Create a new module that covers all
> of the files, attempt to check them out and
> recommit them in the hopes it'll fix the
> corrupted files?

It is likely that the top-of-tree versions of your
files are okay due to the way that RCS keeps
files. Just checking them out and recommitting
them will not help you recover the older versions
that might be corrupt due to problems with the
delta records in the RCS file.

> Option 3 - Run a sanity checking application that I've yet to find :)

You probably wan this tool:
  https://ccvs.cvshome.org/source/browse/ccvs/contrib/validate_repo.in

        Good luck,
        -- Mark
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