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

You are looking at the problem as if the situation for those other users is somehow different from yours. It is not: the problem will affect not only yourself, but all those other users, too.

It’s not as if those other users were members of an elite group that can only cause the problem, but never experience it itself.

In other words:

If other users commit often enough that you will never be able to commit your changes because you have to constantly update, then other users will not be able to commit their changes, either, because they will have to constantly update themselves. This will slow down all commits to a point where at any given time someone will be able to commit his changes without having to update, including yourself.

tl;dr: the problem will fix itself.