What happens if a file I want to commit to SVN is updated so often I don't manage to do a merge quickly enough?

Question

Consider a situation. I want to commit a changed file to SVN and see that someone else committed the same file after I checked it out, so I have to "update" and merge changes. While I'm doing that someone commits the same file again, so when I try to commit the merged file I have to update again.

Now if other users commit often enough it looks like I will never be able to commit my changes. Is that really so? How is this problem solved in real development environments?

Answer 1

This is usually viewed as not a technical problem but a "people" problem. It usually indicates a failure in communication among the team, and if you find yourself in this situation, you should discuss with your fellow developers how to better partition your work.

In most cases, as you are finding, it is not practical for developers to be working in the same area of code at the same time without good coordination between them.

If you actually have this happening at such a rate that you can't even commit your changes, you have moved beyond a problem to what sounds like a Denial-Of-Service attack :).