SlickEdit 17 failing to reload modified files

[sndom]

I am having persistent problems with SlickEdit 17.0.3.0 32 bit on Windows 7 failing to reload files that have been modified on disk by other applications.

I switch frequently between SlickEdit and Visual Studio and have both set to reload modified files (unless they have been edited).  With the latest versions of SlickEdit this has stopped working and SlickEdit often fails to reload a modified file.  This has always worked robustly in the past, but is now major nuisance.

I have experimented with different file load settings to no avail.
Is there a known issue here?  Is there a recommended way to trouble shoot this?

I have also noticed the SlickEdit will sometimes highlight it's task bar icon to attract attention after I switch away from it.  This behaviour also seems to be new.

Dom

[Dan]

Are the files local?  If you have a file that is taking too long to reload it will cease reloading that file.  It will give you a popup alert if/when this happens.  It usually only happens on slow networks.

Can you send me your auto reload options?  It might be easiest to send a picture of that portion of the config dialog.

[sndom]

The files are all local.  The popup alerts are enabled, but I don't see any. Here are my current settings: Cheers Dom

[Dan]

Your options all look good.

Your first post seems to imply that it doesn't always fail?  Is there any rhyme or reason to the files that it does fail on?

[sndom]

No rhyme or reason that I can make out.  Just that it happens frequently.  I can see it hanging on to an old version of a file whilst I repeatedly switch back to Visual Studio and re-save the file hoping it will pick it up before I have to kill the VS process and restart it.

How is this feature implemented?  Is it watching for change events from Windows on the folders containing the open files or does it re-scan the dirs when it gets focus?

[Dan]

It checks file dates when it gets focus.

I do see that you have "Suppress prompt unless modified" on.  Any chance it is reloading and you did not see it?  Do you ever get the warning that you are trying to save and overwrite a newer version of the file than what is in memory?

[sndom]

It can't be re-loading if it still has the old version of the file though, and I don't get any warnings that files are about to be overwritten.

I've just been trying to catch it with procmon to see what is happening (or not happening), but it won't do it now.  I'll keep trying.

I can see it repeatedly (many times per second) reading just the first 8 bytes of a couple of the .vtg files.  One for the current workspace and one for the VS2008 files.  Is that expected?

[Dan]

That is normal.  It is checking to be sure the tag database file's header is valid.  A lot of things hit the tag database, so that is OK.

[sndom]

And one more oddity - it is repeatedly re-reading one of the Visual Studio 9.0 headers: "xstring".
It reads the last 3 bytes of the file, then reads the whole file in 8k chunks from beginning to end.  All the reads succeed.

This file isn't open in the editor.

If something trips up the tagging engine, will it keep retrying like this (it is still doing it).

Dom

[Dan]

Are you running list-members when this comes happens?

This is probably OK, but it is definitely unrelated to the auto-reload issue.

[sndom]

Hi Dan

I'm not deliberately running list-members.  The editor is idle with a window open on a document.
The accesses to xstring seemed to be continuing indefinitely.

Dom

[Dan]

I'll check on that.

Have you been able to reproduce the auto-reload issue?

[sndom]

Hi Dan

I don't have a repro yet as I've not been using the editor so much.  My hunch is that something happens that gets it into a state where the problem happens repeatedly, and that I'll be able to get some more information next time it does this.  When it happens again I'll post what I find.

Cheers

Dom

[Kohei]

Actually I've been hitting this issue myself as well. On Linux, files modified by other apps never get prompted. 100% reproducible.  It's been like that with v17 and probably v16.

My current workaround is to close and re-open the editor whenever external apps modify one of the files I have open in SlickEdit.

[Dan]

Kohei:

Sorry to have to ask this - is Auto Reload on?  I haven't seen a case of consistent absolute failure.