Non-premium tech support at Sourceforge.net

Friday 25th I requested a simple movement of a CVS directory from project wxGuide to wyoDesktop. I labeled the request something like "Moving CVS directory to another project" and requested "directory 'filer' from '[cvs] / wxguide / wxGuide' to '[cvs] / wyodesktop / wyoDesktop'". On Sunday I had a mail from the support with the subject "[...-979494 ] CVS repository clean-up: wxguide->wyodesktop". I immediately checked the CVS and saw the full wxGuide CVS was moved to wyoDesktop!

Okay an error may happen and I submitted a new request 'Reverting wrong CVS directory movement' with "Please reverse the wrong movement and move the directory 'wxGuide' from the wyoDesktop project back to its original place in the wxGuide project". Monday I had an answer from the support "[ ...-980793 ] CVS repository clean-up: wxguide". This time the full wyoDesktop CVS (except for the 'filer' directory) was moved to wxGuide!

I almost couldn't believe what I saw. The reverting had moved the files back to project wxGuide but into an additional wxGuide sub directory, making the movement even worse. The CVS of both projects were now a complete mess. If the wxGuide files would have been in their correct place I could have cleaned up all the rest manually but now I had to immediately submit the third requests labeled "Restore CVS to date Friday June 25th 2004" with "Please simply restore the CVS from project '"wxGuide' and project 'wyoDesktop' to the state at Friday June 25th 2004". Within a few minutes I got answer "[...-981471 ] CVS repsoitory clean-up: wyodesktop" with all kind of excuses but without any answer if and when my CVS repositories are restored. And my third request was already closed!

What should I do now? My CVS was a complete mess because of the two wrong actions by the support people and the request to correct their faults simply closed! I could only submit my four request "CVS restore" which essentially just requests the same as the third but with a slightly stronger wording.

Now it's Tuesday and one of the project's CVS (wxGuide) is restored, the other project' CVS (wyoDesktop) is still a mess. In the answer "[ ...-981510 ] CVS repository clean-up: wxguide" it was mentioned they normally don't do this kind of action and it's the user's responsibility to have a backup. Or in other words the user has to do the clean up if the support makes mistakes.

I have made a backup for my projects and loosing the history in wyoDesktop isn't very bad, since it's a rather new project. wxGuide is restored therefore I'll restore the rest myself and hope I never again need the "help" of the Sourceforge.net support staff.

If you want to get the full story just look up the support request numbers in the Sourceforge.net support request list. If you want to see a nice screen shot of my project, see here.

Conclusion: If you care about your CVS repositories don't ask Sourceforge.net staff for help.