SVN entries crashing RadRails project « BLOG: Mitch Wilson, Austin TX

12Dec/081

SVN entries crashing RadRails project

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I would rather spend time on rails code than troubleshooting Eclipse issues. I thought I would help you do the same. Recently, I found that I could not start one of my RadRails projects, a really cool new app I'm working on. Troubleshooting the solution taught me a lot, though. I'm a glass is half full kind of guy.

The problem

When I started Eclipse, it would crash within seconds of showing the splash screen. I found that deleting my whole rails project from the workspace allowed Eclipse to start successfully. Not quite the solution I had in mind.

The first attempt

Simple, right? The problem appeared to be the project file. Just delete. Restart Eclipse. Damn. Same problem. Crash. Ok, something more drastic. Delete all the contents of the project. Create a new empty project. Restart Eclipse. Ok, now we're getting somewhere. Eclipse started and I am looking at my workspace with the rails project icon in the Ruby Explorer panel. Now just add my actual rails app files to the spanking new RadRails project. Ok, now right-click on the project folder in Eclipse and select refresh ... CRASH! Damn.

The second attempt

Delete everything and check out from SVN again. CRASH! Damn.

The third attempt

My "divide and conqueor technique." This is patented but I will share. Delete half of the folders in the project. Restart. Crash! Delete the half of what's left. Crash. Delete half of now what's left. Crash! Delete all files and folders from my rails project except for one single folder with a few files. Crash . . . crash . . . crash. Finally, nailed it. Delete the .svn folder. Restart. Success!!! Restore the .svn folder. Restart. Crash, the good kind; the kind that confirms the problem is the .svn folder. Now, take a guess and delete the entries file. Restart and success. Restore the entries file in that single .svn folder. Restart and, yes, crash and confirmed: the problem is the entries file in the .svn folder.

The solution

Delete every .svn folder throughout my rails project. I could delete just the entries file, but I wanted to just wipe the slate clean and start over with all the subversion project files. Since I'm running a Windows machine, I used a DOS command. Oh yeh, I got medieval on this bee-ach. On Linux of Mac, of course, translate to your own command line code.

At the command line, switch to your project directory:
cd c:\path\to\rails\project
Now recursively delete all .svn folders by typing:
for /f %D in ('dir/s/b/ad ^| find/i ".svn" ') do if exist "%D" rd/s/q "%D"
Finally, restart Eclipse and recreate your RadRails project by either refreshing the existing project folder or creating a new one.NOTE: If you create a new RadRails project, make sure to un-select generate new rails skeleton, unless you want to overwrite your existing rails files!!!

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Mitch Wilson
December 14th, 2008 - 10:51

Update.

The issue returned after I had cleaned all .svn folders. After checking the project back out, the problem was still there, even after I had rebuilt the repository with the cleaned rails project.

I had learned the that problem was the svn entries file. I’m on a Windows machine and I noticed that the entries file is a plan text file. On Unix, the entries file is xml. Maybe something was expecting the entries file to be xml rather than text?

On a hunch, I disabled subclipse. That fixed the problem. I could now successfully create and refresh my RadRails project. I briefly googled the subclipse and tortoisesvn, which I’m also using, and found that there can be issues between the entries file format. Although not ultimately proven, this is good enough for me. I need to get back to my rails project. The problem can be assumed to be an incompatibility between one or more of the various applications involved reading and writing to the entries file in each of the .svn directories. These applications include Subclipse, TortoiseSVN and RadRails. Since disabling Subclipse resolves the issue, the problem appears to be with my older version of Subclipse 1.2.0. The newest version is 1.4.7. I tried updating Eclipse but starting having issues with the mirror sites. I have to get back to my rails project. Later!