SVN Client Update Circle

[art]

Our current situation looks like this: Both XML source files for editing by team of authors as well as the (properly licensed) "XML Author" tool are under SVN version control. Updates/Commit to and of the source files work like a charm. Updates of the "XML Author" files however fail.

Details of the problems: The accompanying framework files of "XML Author" are subject to customizations which in turn need to be distributed to the authors. Putting both the source files as well as the tool under version control is a great approach to supplying authors with a complete solutions, provided a tool like "Tortoise" is used to update the files. In our situation however, "SVN Client" as part of the "XML Author" distribution is used to manage the SVN repository. On attempting to update the tool installation directory of an author with "SVN Client" a message appears indicating that "SVN Client" cannot lock the files that seem to be locked already.

Possible explanation: DLL files that are in use by "SVN Client" cannot be locked which is a necessary precondition to SVN-updating them.

Questions: (1) Would Syncro experts go along with my "possible explanation"? (2) Is there an elegant workaround? (3) Would it be feasible to extract "SVN client from the "XML Author" installation directory to a second directory that is not under version control? Should this be possible the problems described above would not appear as there is no "double lock" attempt. A necessary precondition for this approach would be that the existing license server could be continued to be used. This cannot be done with the standalone "SVN client" installation which does not allow for use of a license server.

Regards, Aaron.

[adrian]

Hello,

The explanation is correct, the application executable and also the additional native(DLL) and Java(.jar) libraries are in use if the application is running. They cannot be updated/replaced while the application is still running.

The SVN client bundled with XML Author shares too many libraries with the main application, so it wouldn't be practical to extract it from there. It's possible to duplicate the XML Author locally(outside of version control) and run the SVN client as a separate tool, but it would consume a floating license by itself while it is running, though that would be expected.

Another solution would be to use the standalone Syncro SVN Client.
Please contact us at support@oxygenxml.com and give us details about your current licensing(a purchase ID or the billing email address). Maybe we can work something out and provide you with separate licenses for the standalone Syncro SVN Client.

Regards,
Adrian

[art]

Adrian,

thank you for your detailed reply and helpful suggestions.

We may eventually contact "support" as you suggested. As the SVN client is not well received by non-technical authors (I didn't mention that before) it may just as well turn out that a different and more intuitive tool (Tortoise) is the tool of choice for handling SVN for the current project.

Regards, Aaron.