[p4] "rcs file is too big" error

[Tony Sweeney]

Stephen Vance wrote:
> There are two issues. One is how to fix your current problem. The other 
> is how to go forward.
> 
> On the first, the size of the file is large, but not horribly abnormal. 
> I would contact support to work through this one. I'm guessing there's 
> something else going on here.
> 
> Going forward, you may want to make it compressed text (+C) or full file 
> (+F). However, changing the file type will not change it retro-actively, 
> thus the need to fix the current problem first.

I hit this problem practically simultaneously on two out five of my game 
studio servers in the last month.  In both cases the cause was large 
machine generated XML files.  Perforce was making heroic and strenuous 
efforts to compute text diffs on each & every checkin, and there seems 
to be an internal limit somewhere within RCS, which is what you just 
hit.  The fix is to do what p4 tells you.  In our case, these files were 
taking upwards of 10 minutes to check in due to the delta calculations, 
and since they are machine generated the deltas are largely meaningless 
to all but the programmer of the generator application.  So, change the 
type as suggested, and don't worry about the older revisions.  The sync 
performance will suck for every revision prior to the final RCS,v head, 
but your programmers have been living with that for some time, and they 
will only thank you for the speedier checkins once you fix the filetype.

Tony.

> 
> Steve
> 
> lccha-p4python at naos.org wrote:
>> Hi -
>>
>> I'm getting the following error on my Perforce server:
>>
>>   Perforce server error:
>>        Date 2006/12/24 10:02:04:
>>        Operation: dm-SubmitFile
>>        Operation 'dm-SubmitFile' failed.
>>        Librarian checkin /import/perforce1/DbDepotData/depot/dir1/dir2/listfile failed.
>>        Result rcs file is too big '/import/perforce1/DbDepotData/depot/dir1/dir2/listfile,v', change type to compressed text
>>
>> This is the size of the RCS file in question.
>>     -rw-r--r--  1 perforce perforce 1610096513 Dec 24 11:46 listfile,v
>>
>> What are my options here?  Does it make sense for me to change the
>> file to compressed text, or would that negatively impact performance?
>>
>> The file being checked in is a text file of about 700K/5600 lines.
>> It's a generated file, so the contents of the file change completely
>> on each checkin.  It's likely that the diff isn't really saving any
>> space anyways.
>>
>> Thanks in advance for any help.  Happy Holidays!
>> -L
>> _______________________________________________
>> perforce-user mailing list  -  perforce-user at perforce.com
>> http://maillist.perforce.com/mailman/listinfo/perforce-user
>>
>>   
> _______________________________________________
> perforce-user mailing list  -  perforce-user at perforce.com
> http://maillist.perforce.com/mailman/listinfo/perforce-user
> 
> 
>