CVS tries to update files it should leave alone

[Eric Siegerman]

Observed with development CVS as of 29-Apr-2003, and also with
random client and server mixes of 1.11.5, 1.11.5-FreeBSD (i.e.
with their patches) and 1.11.2.1.

Under certain circumstances, CVS tries to update files it should
leave alone.  If, using CVS client/server, I type:
        cvs update subdir/
(with the trailing slash, as provided by my shell's file
completion), CVS will say:
        cvs update: move away ./<file>; it is in the way
        C <file>
about each file in the current directory *only* (i.e. not
recursively).

I've included a log demonstrating the bug.  Most of it is setup,
and can be lightly skimmed.  The interesting parts are at the
end, commented with "###".

More observations (most are not shown in the log):
  - It only happens client/server; locally everything's fine

  - "cvs -n update subdir/" simply reports "U <file>" for files
    in the current directory -- no conflict -- but it does so
    *whether or not* the file really needs updating

  - if a file in the current directory has been locally modified,
    "cvs -n update subdir/" *still* reports "U <file>" (or,
    without the "-n", a conflict), when it should be reporting
    "M <file>"

  - "cvs commit" seems *not* to have this problem (I haven't
    tried other commands)

  - None of this weirdness applies to files in the "subdir"
    named on the command line.  Everything goes as expected
    in there.

  - Other subdirectories (at the same level as subdir) are
    skipped, as they should be

Hypothesis:  Somehow, the trailing slash tricks CVS into
operating on the current directory as well as on the named
subdirectory, but it hasn't read ./CVS/Entries, so it doesn't
think any of the files are supposed to exist.

I haven't tried any of this with subdirectories more than one
deep.  "cvs update sub1/sub2/" would be interesting...

===================== Begin log ======================
#
# Here's the beginning state.  The content of files foo and
# sub/bar seems irrelevent (bug.log can be ignored).
#
$ ls -lR
.:
total 4
-rw-rw-r--    1 erics    erics           0 Apr 29 17:41 bug.log
drwxrwxr-x    3 erics    erics        4096 Apr 29 17:29 tiny-import

./tiny-import:
total 8
-rw-rw-r--    1 erics    erics           4 Apr 29 17:29 foo
drwxrwxr-x    2 erics    erics        4096 Apr 29 17:29 sub

./tiny-import/sub:
total 4
-rw-rw-r--    1 erics    erics           4 Apr 29 17:29 bar

#
# Make sure client/server uses the test binary, not the installed
# one.
#
$ CVS_SERVER=`which cvs` export CVS_SERVER
$ echo $CVS_SERVER
/home/erics/p/cvs/ccvs/src/cvs

#
# Make a repo, and import ./tiny-import as module "tiny"
#
$ cvs -d `pwd`/Repos init
$ cd tiny-import
$ cvs -d `pwd`/../Repos import -m imported tiny vendor version-1
N tiny/foo
cvs import: Importing /home/erics/p/cvs/bug2/tiny-import/../Repos/tiny/sub
N tiny/sub/bar

No conflicts created by this import

#
# Check out two sandboxes of "tiny" -- local and client/server.
#
$ cd ..
$ cvs -d `pwd`/Repos co -d tiny-local tiny
cvs checkout: Updating tiny-local
U tiny-local/foo
cvs checkout: Updating tiny-local/sub
U tiny-local/sub/bar

$ cvs -d :fork:`pwd`/Repos co -d tiny-fork tiny
cvs server: Updating tiny-fork
U tiny-fork/foo
cvs server: Updating tiny-fork/sub
U tiny-fork/sub/bar

#
# Verify that both client and server are the test CVS (now that
# we have a c/s sandbox in which to do so)
#
$ cd tiny-fork
$ cvs version
Client: Concurrent Versions System (CVS) 1.12.0.1 (client/server)
Server: Concurrent Versions System (CVS) 1.12.0.1 (client/server)

###
### In the local sandbox, these three variants of "cvs update"
### are all ok
###
$ cd tiny-local
$ cvs -q update
$ cvs -q update sub
$ cvs -q update sub/

###
### In the client/server sandbox, the first two variants are ok,
### but the third declares a conflict about a file that:
###   - isn't in conflict, and
###   - CVS wasn't supposed to be looking at in the first place
###
#
$ cd ../tiny-fork
$ cvs -q update
$ cvs -q update sub
$ cvs -q update sub/
cvs update: move away ./foo; it is in the way
C foo
$ 
===================== End log ======================

--

|  | /\
|-_|/  >   Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.        erics@telepres.com
|  |  /
My Wine works.  However it crashes about half the time on startup.
Apparently their simulation of windoze API is getting too accurate.  :)
        - Kyle Sallee