ThingWorx Git Extension– Changes not reverting after Checkout Commit

[Jamal8548]

I’m facing a small issue with ThingWorx Git extension.

Let’s say I have exported a project and made a small change in one of the services (but haven’t committed it yet). Then I decide that I don’t want to keep this change and want to revert back to the previous commit version of the project.

Even though I use “Checkout Commit” and then import the entity again, the old version of the service doesn’t appear — the change is still there.

Everything works fine normally when I commit and push, but in this case (uncommitted local changes that I want to discard), it seems not to revert the entity properly.

Right now, my only workaround is to commit the unwanted change with a dummy message, and then go back to the previous commit using Checkout Commit — but that’s not really ideal.

Has anyone found a better way to completely revert to a previous commit and restore entities (like services) to their exact older state without committing the unwanted change first?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Thingworx community post : https://community.ptc.com/t5/ThingWorx-Developers/ThingWorx-Git-Extension-Changes-not-reverting-after-Checkout/m-p/1039135#M70739

[vrosu]

Hi @Jamal8548,

I assigned this to myself. I have researched and I found at least one SO post that describes exactly this problem, and I just read this phrase in the answer "In general, however, git checkout/switch will not overwrite or remove uncommitted work. I say “in general” because one does hear horror stories where work is unaccountably lost. All the same, if git checkout/switch would cause damage, Git is supposed to stop and warn you instead of proceeding."

I added this just to update you I'm looking into it - no definite answer until I properly documented the issue - if there's a way to fix this quickly, I'll do it.

[vrosu]

hi @Jamal8548

I researched the topic and the answer is the following:

1. When you export in the Working Index a file that contains changes (but you don't add it to a commit, which means to execute a Push in this extension case) you will have that file showing in the Status list as Modified. In this situation, the last commit available in the branch contains the older content.
2. When you perform Checkout for a specific commit, that will compare the existing Commit you're in with the Commit you're trying to get to. If the files correspond in the current Commit vs the target Commit, they won't be changed. This is the default checkout behavior for Git
3. There is an a Git option called Forced Commit in the Git Checkout documentation that will throw away local changes or untracked content.

This git checkout option corresponds to JGit's setForced(boolean) command.

checkout().setForced(true)

This would need to be added in the command builder for the Checkout service in lines 422 and 427 in the CitBackupTemplate.java

I believe that this should be the default behavior in order to avoid this situation.

I do not have availability in the next weeks to add this change, even if it's minor, due to my workload, but since the change is easy to add, would you be able to perform this change in Eclipse and let us know if it works?

[Jamal8548]

Thank you so much for your detailed explanation and for sharing all the information — I really appreciate it!
I’ve followed the steps and made the change, but I’m a bit unclear about point 4. Could you please clarify that part for me?

I have import the project as ZIP in eclipse which made two folders in package explorer and change is also done now which you have mentioned and now i would like to follow step 4 and 5 only which are as follows:

step 1 Install the ThingWorx Eclipse plugin.
step 2 Download the ThingWorx Extension SDK version 9.0. It should be a zip file.
step 3 Import the project: Use the File Menu / Import / Projects from Folder or Archive.

step 4 After import, right click on the project name in the left hand side of the screen and in the ThingWorx Extension tab setup the path to the Extension SDK zip file.

step 5 Execute the ant build task. The project uses a customized version of the ant build script that is generated by the ThingWorx Eclipse plugin.

Thanks again for your time and support!

[Jamal8548]

When i import the zip file into eclipse these are the errors which i get in Problems.

[vrosu]

Hi @Jamal8548 ,
Ref import:

• When you import, you'll see two items - uncheck the one that is not a Eclipse project

Ref step 4: if you right click the imported project in the tree, the Eclipse Properties windows will appear - select the ThingWorx Extension tab. Proceed with the instruction - once you set the ThingWorx Extension SDK (use version 9.5) those file missing error messages should disappear

I'm assuming you installed the ThingWorx Eclipse plugin, right?

Ref step 5:
-Once you add the project, you must right click on the build-extension.xml, run as, Ant build... (this will allow you to run only the build job)

Once you did this once, in theory, you should have another "view" being opened in the bottom, called Ant. Each time you need a new build, double-click the build job there, as it's faster.

[Jamal8548]

Hi @vrosu I have tried both SDK version 9.4 and 9.5 but unfortunately there is still one JAR error which still shows up. If you have any idea then please let me know and if you have not any idea then i can also research about it and try to resolve this error. I am looking forward for your feedback. Thank you!

[vrosu]

Hi @Jamal8548 you can safely remove that jar from the build path. It's not being used anyway, since I am using the jgit source code directly.

[Jamal8548]

Hi @vrosu ,
After removing that JAR file, I started getting the following errors:

Then I installed the external library commons-codec-1.15.jar — this resolved the previous errors.
However, when I run ant build now, the following new errors appear: