Plip's Weblog

I feel your pain, I've been there many a time with TortoiseSVN on XP. Every time I think to myself "right, now I understand it I'll be able to ensure that doesn't happen again"... 2 days later ARGH!

I think the only way to truely keep total control over your repository is to learn and use the command line... but then that's not exactly fun or easy to do.

I'm current using SVN with both Tortoise and Ankh at a client site, and I hate it. Every time I create a new directory it will get flagged as to be added; which is fine, until you rename it before commit. Then during commit the add will occur under the old name, then the files commit under the new name and bang, broken repository.

The best client I've found (when working with subtext) is RapidSVN but it's horribly limited in what it does. At least it doesn't add stupid explorer extensions everywhere (oh look, I can add my recycle bin to SVN. Dear Tortoise, piss off)

I'm using TortoiseSVN and SVN on the project I'm working on at the moment, and I find it buggy and un-intuitive.  

You say it's slick - but I think it's anything but; a few of the developers I'm working with have said 'come back sourcesafe, all is forgiven.'

If you're at the point where you'll blow away your local files, it's easier to revert the affected files or directories. As Barry pointedout, it seems to be best to check in regularly. Most of my SVN problems come from doing a bunch of stuff locally between commits.

Feel your pain too. Much as I love subversion - if Explorer locks up, the first thing I kill these days is the Tortoise shell process, and everything comes back.

What's worked for me in the past if Subversion gets totally messed up is:

- export the folder, including non-versioned files

- check out from the repository again

- drop in the files from the exported folder over the top, and hopefully you're back to where you started again

good keep it up

A few of us here use TortoiseSVN on Vista, some 32 bit and some 64 bit.  We haven't had many issues, but we use the _svn setting.  There was also some permission setting that we had to set for Vista with UAC because we were having issues with that.

With my recent source control issues it appears I lost several RDL's, I came across the Reporting Services

Any chance you're storing your working copy on a Samba server? I've been having the same issue as you - found the following post to a mailing list with the fix:

svn.haxx.se/.../0262.shtml

Someone needs to chime in with the counter opinion, right?  I've LOVED subversion, without fail, since somewhere in '05 when VSS was completely craping out on us.  Builds were taking hours to complete just the VSS interactions and maintenance would begin at 7pm and still not be complete at 8 am the next morning.  We simply outgrew VSS.  Once I switched my small team to Svn and discovered the benefit of the modify merge model, and how well Svn handles that, I never looked back.  Of course, the new VSS may be better, I don't know.

I will admit that the  Tortoise Service occassionally causes problems.  Its nothing that killing the process can't correct and it doesn't tear down the machine.  I even use it on our production servers just to make life easy.  

Be sure to check the option to only show shell extensions icons in windoes explorer.  That helps quite a bit to prevent memory issues related to shell enabled applications.  

TortoiseSvn is the second most useful source control utility I've used.  Of course, the first being Subversion itself.  Ankh, however, not so useful.  It is way too inefficient.  I use a simple exploror VS add-in that allows me to launch windows explorer to the directory highlighted in the Solution Explorer.  Then I can interact using tortoise.

I have not installed TortoiseSvn on my Vista machine yet because Vista is unstable.  I'm waiting on the service pack from MS to clear up the hundreds of bugs I deal with on a daily basis before I try anything as lw-level as a shell extension.  

You can chose not to prefer subversion over VSS but try not to hate.  After all, its free, it was written to solve problems with Cvs and the people behind it are really quite incredible.  I am amazed every day by what I CAN do with Svn that I never thought possible.  You just have to go in with an open mind and unlearn some bad VSS habits.  You also have to read the extensive Svn Book, thick as it is, to understand what Svn is going to do so you don't stomp on it.  After all, its just a program and no one could possibly predct everything you are going to do on YOUR computer....

I just uninstalled Tortoise on my fresh install of Vista home and reinstalled it- still no Tortoise context menus coming up - no sign of tortoise in explorer....  What gives????  After all this time - they still don't have it remotely close to fixed on Vista???