{"componentChunkName":"component---src-templates-blog-post-js","path":"/blog/2008/08/08/svn-log-message-encoding-problem/","result":{"data":{"markdownRemark":{"html":"

It’s good practice to put useful commentary in the log message whenever you commit code to a repository.

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Today, I wrote a log message about centigrade and farenheit conversions, using the proper degree symbol °, but this triggered an encoding problem, resulting in an error message:

\n
macbook:~/projects/smarty ash\\$ svn ci plugins/function.temperature.php\nsvn: Commit failed (details follow):\nsvn: Can't convert string from native encoding to 'UTF-8':\nsvn: Tweak: altered temperature title attribute so it contains both farenheight AND\ncentigrade. e.g. "88?\\\\194?\\\\176F or 17?\\\\194?\\\\176C". The order is switched depending on user\npreference.\n--This line, and those below, will be ignored--\n\nM function.temperature.php\n\nsvn: Your commit message was left in a temporary file:\nsvn: '/Users/ash/projects/propagandr/smarty/plugins/svn-commit.tmp'
\n

It didn’t take long to realize although my editor (vim) was configured to use UTF-8, the subversion command-line client had no way of knowing that.

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One way of stopping this happening again would be to set my locale permanently so the character-type is UTF-8 (e.g. export LC_CTYPE=en.UTF-8.) But, as a short-term one-off fix, avoiding retyping the log message (and a little off-topic: remembering subversion ignores filenames mentioned in log messages, forcing you to re-enter them on the command-line again) - the simple fix was:

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LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 svn ci -F plugins/svn-commit.tmp plugins/function.temperature.php
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Worked like a charm.

\n","timeToRead":1,"frontmatter":{"title":"SVN log message encoding problem","blurb":"A quick tip on setting the character-encoding for a Subversion commit message from the command-line","date":"2008-08-08T11:03:12.000Z","modified":"2011-01-03T17:20:14.000Z"}}},"pageContext":{"slug":"/blog/2008/08/08/svn-log-message-encoding-problem/","next":{"fields":{"slug":"/blog/2008/08/20/php-session-management-grievance-2/"},"frontmatter":{"title":"PHP Session Management (grievance 2)"}},"previous":{"fields":{"slug":"/blog/2008/07/22/tweaking-png-transparency-with-imagemagick/"},"frontmatter":{"title":"Tweaking PNG transparency with ImageMagick"}}}},"staticQueryHashes":["1192980692"]}