Naming conflicts during backup

Question

(Posted by Stephen Lilley)

I got the following messaged during backup to a file using Paratext 7.5 Linux version.

"The following files had naming conflicts and were not backed up

/home/myname/ParatextProjects/NTLadTr/usfm.sty

/home/myname/ParatextProjects/NTLadTr/eng.vrs

If you do not wish to see this message again, delete these files"

I’ve never had this error before during backing up to a file in Paratext 7.4 Linux version. Why would it appear now? Is there a bug with the program during backing up or there is an issue with the naming?

Answer 1

(Answered by Thomas Hindle)

Paratext itself, as far as I can tell, hasn’t had any significant updates in this area between PT 7.4 and PT 7.5.

So I suspect that if you ran 7.4 in the current situation it would yield the same warning message.

I suspect the problem occurs because of file case differences. I examined project NTLadTr (The latest copy S/Red on “Mon, 01 Dec 2014 07:56:10 +1100”) and it did not seem to have any file case problems with either usfm.sty or eng.vrs.

So I suspect that if you look in: /home/myname/ParatextProjects/

a usfm.sty and eng.vrs will exist but with differing case. (IE. not all lowercase)

What to do about it:

1. If a single file exists in /home/myname/ParatextProjects/ of usfm.sty and eng.vrs but not in all lowercase then simply rename it to a lowercase. Or
2. If multiple files exist in /home/myname/ParatextProjects/ of usfm.sty and eng.vrs with differing case then delete (or backup and delete) the files not in all lower case.

What caused this: I can’t say for sure but It could have been a new resource that was installed that wrote a copy of usfm.sty with the wrong case. There is logic in PT that tries to protect against this, but its possible that doesn’t deal with all cases.

If you can see a reliable way to reproduce this problem, something like Install Resource X then run backup on Project Y, I would be interested to know so PT can be made more robust against this.