Slight problem with case sensitivity on managed mounts with CVS-1.11.6

[Ronald Landheer-Cieslak]

Christopher Faylor wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 10:27:38AM -0400, Ronald Landheer-Cieslak wrote:
> 
>>Hello CVS maintainer (et al.),
>>
>>I've got a slight problem with CVS when running it on a directory
>>mounted in managed mode: the directory being case-sensitive, ``cvs
>>update'' should *IMHO* not warn about a file whose name might clash
>>with another due to its case (and on ``cvs checkout'', it doesn't).
>>
>>The file in question is called Hash.h, which has a little brother
>>called hash.h.
>>
>>The error is emitted on line 1809 of src/client.c, which also contains
>>a lengthy comment on why the error may be emitted, confirming my
>>hypothesis.
>>
>>My question is not: "please fix this.." - my question is whether you'd 
>>be interested in a fix. The fix would consist of
>>* checking whether the file being updated is on a managed mount (don't
>> know how to do that yet, but I assume it's possible)
>>+ if so, assume case-sensitivity
>>- if not, assume case-insensitivity
> Why not send the comment and your hypothesis here rather than informing
> everyone that there is a comment and asking if anyone would be
> interested in a fix?  I don't think many people would be interested in
> downloading the sources for cvs to see what you're talking about.  From
> your description it is difficult to tell if your problem is with cygwin
> managed mounts or with cvs.
OK, the problem is with CVS - the managed mounts are working properly.
CVS assumes Cygwin is/runs on a case-insensitive (file)system, which is 
usually the case. On managed mounts, however, the assumption fails, and 
CVS complains about conflicts in file names that do not exist. (I 
thought this was clear from the original post, but apparently, that was 
not the case..)

The comment says this:
/* This error might be confusing; it isn't really clear to
    the user what to do about it.  Keep in mind that it has
    several causes: (1) something/someone creates the file
    during the time that CVS is running, (2) the repository
    has two files whose names clash for the client because
    of case-insensitivity or similar causes, See 3 for
    additional notes.  (3) a special case of this is that a
    file gets renamed for example from a.c to A.C.  A
    "cvs update" on a case-insensitive client will get this
    error.  In this case and in case 2, the filename
    (short_pathname) printed in the error message will likely _not_
    have the same case as seen by the user in a directory listing.
    (4) the client has a file which the server doesn't know
    about (e.g. "? foo" file), and that name clashes with a file
    the server does know about, (5) classify.c will print the same
    message for other reasons.

    I hope the above paragraph makes it clear that making this
    clearer is not a one-line fix.  */

A wee bit further digging brings us to the isfile() function, of which 
diverse versions exist in the code. The solution would seem to be to
* either write a Cygwin-specific one or
* choose the right one to use

>>The patch would probably be Cygwin-specific, so I doubt it would be
>>possible to get it up-stream, but I'll try to make it as clean as
>>possible..
> That seems to imply that the problem is with cvs since any fix to
> cygwin would be cygwin-specific.  If that is the case, then any fix
> should probably go upstream.
Yes, the problem is with CVS, not with Cygwin. Personally, I though the 
first paragraph of the original post made that clear - apparently, it 
didn't, so I apologize.

Also, the post was primarily intended for the CVS maintainer, whom I 
assumed has the source already and could trivially look up the file 
src/client.c. That being said, the comment in question is of no 
importance to my question: my question being "I found an itch in CVS: 
this is the itch, would you like me to scratch it?" the details of the 
scratching would only be interesting if there were any interest in the 
scratching itself were interesting..

rlc


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