Resolving a 'sticky tag is not a branch' error

from: http://drupal.org/node/57516 Edited by jhodgdon, aclight, dww, kbahey. 

Last updated May 7, 2009. Created by ugerhard on April 6, 2006.
Edited by jhodgdon, aclight, dww, kbahey. Log in to edit this page.

If you get errors such as:

• cvs commit: sticky tag DRUPAL-x-x for file foo/bar/baz is not a branch
• DRUPAL-x-x already exists on version x.x, NOT MOVING tag to branch x.x.x.x

it probabably means that you checked out a tag rather than a branch -- and you can only check in code against a branch, not a tag. You can learn more about CVS tags and branches on theDrupal CVS branches and tags handbook page.

It is also remotely possible, if you are working on a very old and very stale project, that the reason you are seeing the error is that someone created a regular tag on a file or project, when they should have created a branch instead, but this has not been possible to do for a long time. Information on how to correct this legacy problem is at the bottom of this page.

The likely cause of your error, and how to fix it

It is likely that you did something like this, to trigger this error:

1. cvs co -r DRUPAL-6--1-0 contributions/modules/foo
2. cd contributions/modules/foo
3. edit foo.module to fix a bug
4. cvs commit -m "fixed some bug" foo.module

The problem is that the CVS checkout you did in step one was against "DRUPAL-6--1-0", which is a tag indicating version 6.x-1.0 of the module.

What you should have done is to check out the 6.x branch, which is "DRUPAL-6--1":

1. cvs co -r DRUPAL-6--1 contributions/modules/foo

Assuming that you have just seen this error in the checkin step, the steps to fix it are:

1. cd ../../..
2. cvs update -r DRUPAL-6--1 contributions/modules/foo
3. cd contributions/modules/foo
4. cvs commit -m "fixed some bug" foo.module

Fixing legacy tag issues

As mentioned above, it is remotely possible, if you are working on a very old and very stale project, that the reason you are seeing the error is that someone created a regular tag on a file or project, when they should have created a branch instead. This has not been possible to do for a long time, but because it is still possible you could encounter this, here is information on how to fix it.

First, you need to verify that this is actually the problem. Run this command to see the revision history of the file you are trying to check in (or check history on http://cvs.drupal.org):

cvs status -v file/of/interest

If the history on cvs.drupal.org says  Tag: DRUPAL-x-x  instead of  Branch: DRUPAL-x-x , you have this problem. In the command line output, you are looking for a line that looks something like

DRUPAL-x-x (tag: 1.4)

in the  Existing Tags  section.

If you have identified that this is your problem, read on for how to fix it.

Implications of the new release system

Do not attempt to delete a release node to get over this problem.

Unfortunately, this problem gets more complicated with the new release system in place. To keep users from doing harm to releases that already exist, there is an access check in place toprevent deleting tags that have release nodes pointing to them. However, this check also prevents users from converting a tag into a release. In this case, at step #3 below, you will see an error message like this:

** ERROR: You are not allowed to delete or move tags that have
** release nodes pointing to them. "DRUPAL-4-7" is being used by
** http://drupal.org/node/96631

Eventually, the user interface for all of this will somehow be modified to make it possible to correct this problem yourself. In the mean time, the only option is to submit a support requestasking for help (please set the component to "CVS" and leave the project as "Drupal.org infrastructure"). Be sure to include the full path to the release node (the final line of the error message from cvs tag -d listed above). A CVS administrator can temporarily change the tag that the release node is pointing to so you'll be able to remove the tag. Once you've got the branch created, the administrator will have to change the release node to point it to the branch.

Steps to solving this problem

Once the release node that is pointing to the old tag has been temporarily modified, you can follow these steps to remove the tag and create a branch from the same set of files and revisions. All earlier revisions history will be kept. We will assume Drupal 4.7 below.

1. Make sure the release node is no longer pointing to your old tag (see above).
2. cvs checkout -r DRUPAL-4-7 modules/mymodule
   (get a copy based on the old, non-branch tag)
3. cd modules/mymodule
   (DON'T FORGET THIS!)
4. cvs tag -d DRUPAL-4-7
   (delete the existing, non-branch tag)
5. cvs tag -b DRUPAL-4-7
   (add the new branch tag to the same revisions of the files you've checked out in step #1)
6. cvs update -r DRUPAL-4-7
   (to reset the sticky tag on your workspace to the new branch tag)

Verify if the revisions history on http://cvs.drupal.org/ now says Branch: DRUPAL-4-7 or if cvs status -v modules/mymodule/mymodule.module now shows "DRUPAL-4-7 (branch: x.x.x)".