Spontaneous File Changes Requiring Merging/Updating

donkiely · Post by **donkiely** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 12:19 pm

Every so often on one computer (my laptop), I'll start the Vault GUI client (2.0.6) and every file in every project that I have copied to the laptop is showing as having changes. Many are shown as edited but with an unchanged size and many are needing a merge. Needless to say, it is a pain to get it all sorted out, particularly if I have real changes mixed in that I don't want to lose.

What would cause that? I use Norton Antivirus, but this happens on days when there wasn't a complete system scan. I use a couple of ad/spyware apps, but I don't believe that they are scanning anything.

I'm running in CVS mode.

So why might this happen?

Thanks for any clues!!!
Don

sterwill · Post by **sterwill** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 1:59 pm

Are you changing time zones (or possibly daylight saving settings) when these happen? Vault 1 and Vault 2 don't compensate for changes in timezone (and DST) that cause Windows filesystem times to "change" when scanned, and the result is similar. Vault 3 fixes this bug.

Are these files really changed? You said the size is not different; does a diff tool show any changes?

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 2:57 pm

Wow! Yep, I headed home late last night, and I do the time zone change. No, there are no real changes other than those files that I actually edited.

Is there a good workaround? I guess the obvious one is to make sure I check stuff in before changing the time zone, then do a get latest and overwrite if necessary. Somewhat problematic if I'm offline when I want to change the time.

If I forget, can I switch back to the old time zone, check it all in, and then switch and do a get latest? I'll have to try that.

Thanks!
Don[/quote]

sterwill · Post by **sterwill** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 3:20 pm

Yes, you can always switch the time zone momentarily back to check in your changes. There's really no other good work-around for Vault 2, but the bug is fixed in Vault 3.0.

3.0 Details:

Vault 3.0 will convert Vault 2.0 format working folders to a new format, but since no time zone was saved in the old format, the current time zone is used during the conversion. This works well, but folders are only upgraded as they're read by the Vault client, and sometimes Vault won't need to read from a working folder during a session. If the time zone is changed between the Vault upgrade and the time Vault is used to access a working folder, this old bug creeps up (file statuses are incorrect).

A simple work-around is to start with a fresh set of working folders once Vault is upgraded to 3.0. Barring any new bugs, the timezone/DST bugs should disappear.

Vault 3.0 also has a feature that lets you use a file's CRC32 instead of its filesystem modification time to determine if it's really modified. If your time zone does change before you convert old working folders, you can simply turn on the CRC checks, and Vault won't even check the modification dates on the files.