Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - SVN RELOCATE: SourceForge moves Subversion URLS

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SVN RELOCATE: SourceForge moves Subversion URLS - Will the fun ever start?

Posted 2007-07-10 08:52 PM in DasBlog.

I really don't like to "blog bile" but seriously, SourceForge may have jumped the shark for me. The website does have a certain Vegas billboard charm, circa 1997, but what is going on over there? The Site News is updated (barely) every few months, while important news is hidden on the Site Status Page.

UPDATED: Apparently I'm the only guy who didn't get the message on this.

Basically, a few days ago they upped and change the URLs for Subversion. Suddenly I started getting this uninformative error (Subversion's fault really, more than SF.NET):

Error: PROPFIND of '/svnroot/dasblogce/trunk': Could not resolve hostname `svn.sourceforge.net': The requested name is valid and was found in the database, but it does not have the correct associated data being resolved for. (https://svn.sourceforge.net)

John Forsythe figured out that they'd moved the URLs, adding the project name as a sub-sub-domain, providing what value I do not know.

The announcement of this change was buried here. Of course, why didn't I see that? Seems like it would have been better to email all the project owners, or put an announcement on each project page with the new URL.

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Either way, you can fix it WITHOUT re-checking out your code by using the rarely used SVN Relocate command, as seen in the screenshot above. You'll get a very frightening warning from Subversion indicating that this is ever so rarely used and you may ruin everything. Say Yes. Crisis averted.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007 8:19:39 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Seems like it would have been better to email all the project owner

Actually, I think they did.

As Co-Admin of Subtext I seem to recall getting at least one email from SourceForge letting us know about the upcoming move... and that was some time ago. Phil and I sent forwarded the announcements about the move to the Subtext team and I personally made the jump several months ago.

Perhaps the email was trapped by a spam filter? Or perhaps they figured there was only enough room for one .NET blog engine on SourceForge! I kid, I kid. :)

Steven Harman

Tuesday, July 10, 2007 11:21:16 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

That's correct, Steven, I also received that e-mail:

SourceForge.net Update: June 2007 Edition
0. Introduction
1. Legacy Subversion Access Method Going Away
2. May Project of the Month (POTM): Scorched3D
3. Statistics

Robbie

Wednesday, July 11, 2007 12:23:10 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I've got it too... I have done a relocate using TortoiseSvn and everything wen well for me!

gloubidou

Wednesday, July 11, 2007 4:51:31 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

You're not the only guy that didn't get this message. This move broke our build...twice.

It's doubly annoying since it means I have to have a custom setup for every project rather than sharing at least the root URL. Bleh.

Craig

Wednesday, July 11, 2007 4:53:47 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Wait, wouldn't "svn switch" accomplish the same thing, without the scary warnings?

David

Wednesday, July 11, 2007 10:28:43 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

@David: Scott is actually talking about using the switch command with the --relocate flag. The relocate flag is used when the URL to the repository has changed, but the contents of the working copy remains the same. It's dangerous, because you can mess things up royally if you point it to the wrong URL by mistake.

C-J Berg

Wednesday, July 11, 2007 11:39:20 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Hey Scott! I'm from SF.net, and I'm sorry for your frustration. Our Site News and Site Status mechanisms could be more user friendly, for sure.

Thanks for posting a good procedure for moving your working copy, though!

Ross

Ross Turk

Wednesday, July 11, 2007 12:53:00 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

You guys should at least consider relocating DasBlog to CodePlex. I've been using CodePlex for about 8 months now. It is a pleasure to use from both a developer and end user point of view.