[TxMt] Re: >>>External Changes deleting parts of file

[Greg]

On Jan 4, 2013, at 11:01 AM, Allan Odgaard <mailinglist at textmate.org> wrote:

> On Jan 4, 2013, at 1:24 AM, Greg <web at web.knobby.ws> wrote:
> 
>> I'm working on a Ruby script in TextMate 2 and all of a sudden I'm seeing the end of my files disappear and inserted midline is ">>>>>>> External Changes" and from there on everything is deleted. The only thing that I've knowingly changed is I've started to use Bookmarks. Therefore Cmd-F2 and shift-F2.
>> 
>> Any ideas?
> 
> When a file is externally modified but also has local changes, TextMate will run ‘diff3’ to try and intelligently merge in the external changes. If there is a conflict, you would get a marker like the one you quote.
> 
> It sounds like something is not working as it should though.
> 
> Could it be that this file is externally modified (while you’re working with it)?

It's not impossible that I'd opened the files with BBEdit since I understand compare files there more easily. But I don't think that I did it on all these files and I've done this for years without any problem. But see below for  a more likely culprit.
> 
> Are you regularly using Ruby → Run (⌘R) with these files?

Yes
> 
> Is this on a local HFS+ file system (as opposed to a network mounted drive, something controlled by a syncing service like DropBox)?

Ah, maybe this is the problem. And I'd forgot I'd done it. Files are in a Dropbox folder. Not being used or worked on from another computer though. But this is plausible explanation and as of now is the only thing that I can think of that's changed. 

Is there anything I can do to continue to use Dropbox and prevent the problem. Dropbox isn't a requirement, but I use the script on my laptop and thought this would be easier than copying it over when I made change.

Thanks Allan.