When a commit fails due to someone else’s locks, it’s fairly
easy to learn about them. The easiest way is to run svn status
--show-updates
:
$ svn status -u M 23 bar.c M O 32 raisin.jpg * 72 foo.h Status against revision: 105 $
In this example, Sally can see not only that her copy of foo.h is out of date, but also that one of
the two modified files she plans to commit is locked in the repository.
The O
symbol stands for
“Other,” meaning that a lock exists on the file and was
created by somebody else. If she were to attempt a commit, the lock on
raisin.jpg would prevent it. Sally
is left wondering who made the lock, when, and why. Once again, svn info has the
answers:
$ svn info http://svn.example.com/repos/project/raisin.jpg Path: raisin.jpg Name: raisin.jpg URL: http://svn.example.com/repos/project/raisin.jpg Repository UUID: edb2f264-5ef2-0310-a47a-87b0ce17a8ec Revision: 105 Node Kind: file Last Changed Author: sally Last Changed Rev: 32 Last Changed Date: 2006-01-25 12:43:04 -0600 (Sun, 25 Jan 2006) Lock Token: opaquelocktoken:fc2b4dee-98f9-0310-abf3-653ff3226e6b Lock Owner: harry Lock Created: 2006-02-16 13:29:18 -0500 (Thu, 16 Feb 2006) Lock Comment (1 line): Need to make a quick tweak to this image. $
Just as you can use svn info to examine objects in the working copy, you can also use it to examine objects in the repository. If the main argument to svn info is a working copy path, then all of the working copy’s cached information is displayed; any mention of a lock means that the working copy is holding a lock token (if a file is locked by another user or in another working copy, svn info on a working copy path will show no lock information at all). If the main argument to svn info is a URL, the information reflects the latest version of an object in the repository, and any mention of a lock describes the current lock on the object.
So in this particular example, Sally can see that Harry locked the file on February 16 to “make a quick tweak.” It being June, she suspects that he probably forgot all about the lock. She might phone Harry to complain and ask him to release the lock. If he’s unavailable, she might try to forcibly break the lock herself or ask an administrator to do so.