Subversion - remove the green ticks

Question

Subversion newbie warning!

I have Subversion installed along with TortoiseSVN v 1.6.6 on Windows Server 2003.

I have a simple website that runs under IIS from the location c:\websites\rdlm.

On the dev ser, the website code lives in c:\codebase\rdlm

Previously the website would be copied from a development server to the production web server as a simple file copy. This left a green tick on the production folder. My guess was that this was because the folder was copied across including all the hidden .svn folders.

To try and fix this I first ran an "Export" from the development folder on the dev server to a deployments folder (c:\deployments\rdlm). This did seem to work, no green tick on the temp folder. I then copied this folder to the production web server. To my surprise the green tick was present on the production server c:\websites\rdlm. I have searched the folder for the hidden .svn (first enabling explorer so that hidden folders and files are displayed) and there are none.

Can anyone please explain why I still have the green ticks on the c:\websites\rdlm on the prod server?

My view is that tortoise SVN shouldn't even be installed on the prod server - then I assume there's be no green ticks but I'd still like to know the answer to this question so that I have a better understanding of how subversion works.

Answer 1

The icon overlays (the "green ticks") are applied by the TortoiseSVN status cache, TSVNCache.exe. It hasn't caught up with the fact that the .svn directory has been removed yet, so it's keeping the overlays on there.

I agree that TortoiseSVN shouldn't be on your production server; it shouldn't even be on your development server. You should have a build & deploy process (managed through a continuous integration server) which takes care of getting the application where it needs to be, in the configuration it needs to be in. At least for the development environment. For production, you should have a very well-defined, repeatable process for getting the bits on the server, and restricted access to that server so that you can ensure that only designated people are releasing code to production, when they should be releasing it (and releasing the right code).

Answer 2

The green tick has nothing to do with what is installed on the server, it is a feature of the TortoiseSVN client. However, the icon overlay is heavily cached and the invalidation is a bit unreliable. Wait a while, like a day or so and the icon overlays will vanish.