Command Line Null Reference Exception

[dronad]

I think the wrong conclusion may have been arrived at:

I am an old UNIX guy and so we use MKS utilties (Korn shell) under windows as it makes scripting and getting around easier. In the process of building/rebuilding we switched to Windows CMD for testing and things started working.

Now with same build of vault.exe it fails if using under MKS shell and executes fine under windows CMD.

david

[ian_sg]

Would one (or both) of you mind zipping up the contents of this directory and attaching it here? I've been unable to reproduce this behavior with a vanilla 3.1.5 install.

[dronad]

Ian,

I am thinking that somehow this is related to the command shell that was used to run the script... still would be nice if it worked under MKS Korn shell, but not sure you are testing in that environment.

When I went back to a clean install of 3.1.5 (3546) client and used it with Windows XP CMD shell -- it works.

I can run other .net command line programs with that MKS shell, but it is causing the vault.exe to fail.

This is unfortunate as we would prefer to script in this environment .. but we are probably in the minority.

David

[stephn]

Ian,
What directory do you need?

[ian_sg]

I guess that would help.

I need your Vault client directory, by default c:\program files\sourcegear\vault client

[stephn]

We may have stumbled onto something here. The machine I have been using is running Win 2K. On that box, the CLC is not working. However, it does work from my PC, which is running XP. I'm using the exact same command in both cases.

What do you think? Could there be changes between these 2 OSs that will cause the problem?

[ian_sg]

Stephn,

Vault is supported on Windows 2000. My first guess would be that there's a difference in the .NET framework or its configuration. Are there any other .NET apps on the Windows 2000 machine you could test? Are there any other .NET framework differences between the two machines that you're aware of?

Dronad,

I know very little about MKS, but I am a cygwin user and have no trouble using the CLC under cygwin/bash.

[stephn]

In an effort to resolve this issue in the past several days, I have un-installed and re-installed .NET Framework 1.1 on the 2000 box. Unfortunately no other applications on that box use .NET currently. The .NET installation that I used is the same one I installed on my XP PC.

[ian_sg]

I'll get test going on a fresh Windows 2000 machine to be sure, but I doubt we'll find the culprit there. I'll let you know tomorrow morning.

Also to re-cap our other conclusions at this point:

The re-build did NOT actually fix the problem. The command-line environment changed during that test, which aligns with the successful tests here of the released 3.1.5 binary CLC.

Stephen, assuming we test successfully under Windows 2000, tomorrow I'll probably send you an "instrumented" build so we can get some additional info about what's failing.

[ian_sg]

Stephn,

As I kind of expected, we were unable to reproduce this error on a Windows 2000 machine (SP4, Framework 1.1, all "Windows Update" updates).

The next step is to send you a build that will help diagnose the problem. If you email me (using the button below) we'll figure out how to get it to you.

[stephn]

We stumbled upon the problem (and solution), I think. I had a fresh set of eyes look at the configuration and he noticed something that I didn't think to mention.

Our build box is set up so that it can build several different versions of our application. We do this by creating a virtual drive for each different version so that the build area for one version won't interfer with the build area of another. I had installed Vault on the virtual drive for the version I'm trying to build.

If I instead install Vault on c:, the command line get is successful.

This might be something to include in your Knowledge Base.

[ian_sg]

Dang! One of us should have noticed the odd drive letter, too. Well thanks for reporting back. (A lot of times people just vanish, and we don't get a chance to find out how the issue was resolved and improve our product accordingly.) I'll see if I can reproduce this on a mapped drive and we'll either fix it or document it.

Thanks,