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A
Anonymous
October 22, 2008
Question

Renaming folders messed up source control

  • October 22, 2008
  • 1 reply
  • 2328 views
Hi all,

I'm hoping someone can help me. We're using RH6 and VSS integrated together for source control. One of the people on my team renamed a folder (henceforth, "parent folder"), and now my RoboHelp won't get the new (renamed) folder or the topic files it contains. Here's what happened:

1. She renamed the parent folder. RH, as expected, created a new folder and moved the child folders and topics into it for her, and deleted the old parent folder from her RH. She says that she got a message saying that RH was deleting the old version of the folder (as expected).
2. Upon closing RH and checking in files, the "new" folder and the child folders and topics it contains were placed in VSS (as expected). However: The old parent folder was not deleted from VSS, even though it was now gone from her machine.
3. Today, I logged in and got files, and got a message saying that a file was deleted and asking if I want to purge it from my machine. Knowing that this one of her files and she should know what she's doing, I said Yes. I got the message for only one file (not all five or six), and I clicked only Yes, not Yes to All.
4. In my RH Project tab, the folder with the old name was gone, and the new folder was present, but it didn't (doesn't) include any of the child folders or topics.
5. I looked in VSS, and indeed the child folders and files are there.
6. I tried several times to "get" files, through RH and again through VSS.
6. When getting through VSS, the files and child folders were pulled down to my C drive (as evident in Windows Explorer), but they don't show in my Project tab in RH.
7. I tried deleting my CPD file and restarting RH, thinking that might help, but nothing was fixed.
8. It pulled down an FPJ file for the parent (renamed) folder to my C drive, but the FPJ file doesn't actually exist in the parent folder in VSS. (Not sure how that happened.)
9. I thought maybe I need to import the files manually, but when I tried to create the missing child folders inside this renamed folder, I get an error message and it won't let me do anything else: "The files in the list below could not be found in version control. You may need to get the latest version before you can execute the selected action" and it lists the FPJ file mentioned in step 8.

I have no idea what to do to fix this. Should I delete the FPJ file from my C drive? Should I somehow copy the FPJ file from my C drive to VSS manually? (And how?)

I don't understand what the proper way is to rename folders and files now that we have VSS. Before we got source control, we were always able to just rename folders and files easily, but doing this seems to break something. What is the correct way to do this? By chance, is there a how-to book out there for using RH with source control? Obviously, things break very easily. :(

I appreciate any help!

Thanks,
Lisa
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1 reply

Gravenstein
Gravenstein
Inspiring
October 22, 2008
Hi Lisa -

We run into situations like this every so often with our RoboSource Control configuration, too.Sometimes we can trace the problem back to a network interruption, but more often we never really know what went wrong. Good idea with deleting the cpd and restarting RH. Sometimes that will be all it needs. At this point, what I would do is attempt to manually configure the fpj file using Notepad. Close RH and back up the project. Then, with the files and folders in place in Windows, edit the fpj file (it'll need to be checked out, of course). Delete the cpd file (again), and open RH. This doesn't always fix the problem, but it usually does.

HTH,
G
A
Anonymous
October 22, 2008
Hi Gravenstein,

Thank you for your response. I'm sorry to be so dense, but I'm really not sure what you mean...

- You wrote: At this point, what I would do is attempt to manually configure the fpj file using Notepad.
Question: What do you mean by "manually configure" it? I opened it in Notepad, and it has about five lines of open and close tags. I really don't know what I'm supposed to do here.
- Then, with the files and folders in place in Windows, edit the fpj file (it'll need to be checked out, of course).
Question: By "checked out," do you mean through VSS?

Another problem related to all of this has arisen: We asked our other writer to open up the project from her machine. She got a message saying that the FPJ file for the old parent directory is missing from source control, and it asked us a very cryptic question about what we wanted to do with it. We were afraid to click Yes, so we clicked Help instead. RH didn't like this for some reason (gave some cryptic messages about not being able to find the program), and then crashed. When we reopened the project, we clicked Cancel on this dialog box about the FPJ file. Not only does this third writer not have the new parent folder and its child folders and topics retrieved to her C drive, the old parent folder and ghost topics show with red Xs. The old parent folder and its contents are completely missing in Windows Explorer, but RH thinks they should be there. When we right-click on one of the ghost topics and select Delete, we get the error message about the old parent folder's FPJ file being completely gone from VSS (which is what we want). We are unable to remove the old parent folder from her version of the project at all.

I'm so frustrated with this that I'm about to just throw out VSS and go back to the way things were before.

I appreciate your help.
Lisa
A
Anonymous
October 22, 2008
By the way, it just occurred to me, I can't check out the FPJ file for the new parent folder because it's not in VSS. It shows only on my C drive and on the C drive of the writer who renamed the folder.

Thanks,
Lisa
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