How to solve 'Synchronizing CVS' problem in Eclipse IDE?

Question

I'm trying to make an update of one project of mine, but i don't manage. When I try, I get the error

'Synchronizing CVS' has encountered a problem.
Problems reported while synchronizing CVS Workspace. 0 of 1 resources were synchronized.

Details:
Problems reported while synchronizing CVS Workspace. 0 of 1 resources were synchronized.
  An error occurred synchronizing /<Project name>: The server reported an error while performing the "cvs update" command.
    The server reported an error while performing the "cvs update" command.
      <project name>: The server did not provide any additional information.  

Should I care about this error or not? It looks that everything is fine, but it bothers me.

Thank you for reading

Updated

I discovered that there was one file updated, but that resulted not updated. Another error i was doing it was that i was synchronizing at a project level, in these situations i think it's better to synchronize at folder level and to open CVS Console. To open CVS console press window > open View > console. Then in the console view there is a shell icon it needs to be pressed and then press CVS. Doing like that CVS output it's showed and it helps a bit more.

Raina

Answer 1

There are several reasons why this can happen:

• Some other process changed the file and Eclipse hasn't refreshed the workspace. To check, select the file in question and choose "Refresh" from the context menu. This is probably not your problem but it's a common issue, so I wanted to mention it.

• There is something wrong on the CVS server (file or directory permissions, failing harddisk, corrupt RAM, etc). You must look into the CVS log file to figure out what might be causing the problem. You should also try to find out which file causes the problem. Check the cvs commit log which files were changed and then update one after the other manually until it breaks.

As a general rule: If something is broken, you should fix it.

Bacchius

Great answer. I want to comment your last sentence: One should fix broken things allright, but life is usually more complicated. In a landscape of broken things, the biggest things usually get the priority though. So I guess it's more common than we think to have a bunch of things not fixed lying around – Ramburt

Or "someone should fix it, and if I have time, I will for the good of all. " – Cyprinodont

Answer 2

I was getting the same problem and the reason was that I had a merge conflict on one file and CVS had created the backup versions of the file - (.# files). Once I deleted them, the problem went away. Thought I'd mention this in case someone may run into the same problem.

Agleam

Answer 3

Had the error shortly after mering. Here was how I managed to solve it for me:

1. Find the bad file causing it.
2. Copy the contents by selecting all the text inside eclipse and copying that.
3. Replace the file with the latest version from the server.
4. Paste in the copied text.

The override fixes the corruption causing the error and the copying of the text means you not lose the contents.

Aten

Answer 4

Goto Windows >> Preference >> Network Connections, try with changing active providers - Manual, Direct & Native. I too face the same issue and able to resolve it by adding proxy by pass IP to cvs repos.

Rothschild

Answer 5

Did you change a resource/class outside of eclipse and dont updated the plugin inside of eclipse? When you than call synchronize, eclipse will show an error message.

Cavorilievo

Answer 6

Had the same problem, and solved it when i deleted the content of my workspace/project/WebContent/folder with problem/CVS/Entries, then i refreshed my files in eclipse and it worked.
I guess something there was corrupted.

Linetta

Answer 7

In addition to removing files that started with .#, I also had to "Overwrite and Update" the file so that Eclipse CVS knew what state it was in.

If this happens when updating code, this error could be avoided by synchronizing the workspace first and addressing any merge issues. I realize that this is not an option when switching branches.

I've learned to use the files starting with '.#' as the places to clean up. If I've deleted those files, I then go and synchronize folder by folder.

Afterwards, clean up the old .# files so they are not misleading later.

In DOS, "del /s .#*"

Mojgan