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#703 External Diff Cannot Locate File
I frequently receive an error when I launch an external
diff viewer. The error is comparable whether I use
WinMerge or CSDiff as the viewer, so I'm pretty
confident the problem originates in WinCVS. Depending
on the viewer, I'll either get the error "File not found"
or "Empty file." But when I look in the temporary
directory, the file is there.
The most puzzling thing about it is that I cannot figure
out the pattern. The error does not happen all the time.
When it does, it's usually "sticky," meaning that
afterwards I can't do diffs on that particular file, even
when I can do diff's on other files. Often the first diff I
try after starting the program will work, but later ones
may fail. Once they fail, the failure is often, but not
always, sticky.
For what it's worth, it doesn't seem to matter whether
there are spaces in the file name. The files are
under "My Documents," so there are spaces in the path.
I was seeing this in 1.3.15, and still see it in WinCVS
1.3.16.1 Beta 16 (Build 1). I'm using WinXP with NTFS.
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Confirmed. Probably an issue with temp file name generation...
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I also experience this problem frequently. I am using CSDiff on
Win 2K. It is a major problem for me and I am glad to see the
priority of this bug has been raised.
Current workaround: use internal diff for problem files.
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One more possibly related observation: This seems to have to
do with the length of the file name/path. I get this most
often when working in flat view when operating on files in
very deep directory levels and/or which have rather long
file names. The problem is not limited to diffing from the
graph view.
If I affect the length of the path passed to the external
diff (e.g. by moving directly to the directory where the
files are located or by mounting a virtual drive via subst)
I am able to diff the files alright.
I agree that this is very annoying. Especially our
documentation writer is affected by this as RoboHTML is by
default using the full topic titles as file and folder
names. This could make file paths become too long really
quick, so she's seeing this issue a lot.
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I think it's a timing problem. I was able to workaround it
by creating a .bat file which adds a delay before invoking
the diff program. E.g., for CSDiff, the .bat file would look
something like this:
sleep 1
start <path-to-CSDiff>\CSDiff.exe %*
The start command is necessary to get CSDiff to run
properly. I'm running XP-Pro.
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I tried the .bat file wrapper as suggested by radwidmer, and
haven't seen the problem since. Sounds like he's on the right
track. Thanks!
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Jerzy, can/will you integrate this timing fix (sleep 1) into the
external diff invocation code?
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I also have the same problem.
The error occur when the wincvs is in flat mode, and the
selected directory is not the same directory of the
directory of file.
Thanks
Manuel Romeiro
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The previous comment hasn't complete.
The error occur when the wincvs is in flat mode, and the
selected directory is not the same directory of the file and
I try to compare files from de graph.
In these conditions, the graph have another problem. The
problem is that the icon that identifies the current version
on disk is not shown.
Thanks
Manuel Romeiro