Strange problem with Subversion - File already exists when trying to recreate a directory that USED to be in my repository

Question

So - I used to have a directory called mysql a few revisions ago   I deleted it  and decided to start over - but when I try to create the new mysql directory - I keep running into the  File Already Exists  error   support  etc puppet modules  mkdir mysql support  etc puppet modules  svn add mysql  A         mysql support  etc puppet modules  svn commit -m   Test  Adding         modules mysql svn  Commit failed  details follow   svn  File already exists  filesystem   var lib svn puppet db   transaction  11-r   path   trunk modules mysql  support  etc puppet modules  svn delete mysql svn  Use --force to override this restriction svn   mysql  has local modifications support  etc puppet modules  svn --force delete mysql D         mysql   I saw some other posts suggest forcing an update  support  etc puppet modules  svn status support  etc puppet modules  svn update At revision 11  support  etc puppet modules  svn mkdir mysql A         mysql support  etc puppet modules  svn commit -m  Test  Adding         modules mysql svn  Commit failed  details follow   svn  File already exists  filesystem   var lib svn puppet db   transaction  11-s   path   trunk modules mysql

User · Answer

This is a nasty one    mysterious error and no clear fix   update revert commit did NOT work in my situation   I hadn t done anything weird - just some svn moves   What DID work for me was   svn remove offender svn commit cd    rm -fR parent svn up parent cd parent svn remove offender again svn commit copy offender back in  minus  svn dirs  svn add svn commit   Weird to say the least   Basically  the svn remove --force offender wasn t doing completely removing for some reason   Which is sort of what the error message was saying   Only by removing the parent  then updating the parent  did this become obvious because then the offender reappeared   svn removing offender again then properly removed it

User · Answer

I m not sure if this is helping you  but I guess that when you do a svn add mysql after you ve deleted it it will just reinstantiate the directory  so don t do a mkdir yourself   If you create a directory yourself svn expects a  svn directory inside it because it already  knows  about it

User · Answer

This solution merges smoothly and does not lose history    Move  working-copy offender to a temporary location  Do an svn checkout of svn ssh   svn example com repo offender to  working-copy offender  Manually move your files from the temporary location into the new checkout  Delete the temporary location

User · Answer

I had a problem like this when I deleted a folder  and sub-folders  and went to recreate them from scratch   You get this error from manually deleting and re-adding folders  whereas files seem to cope OK with this    After some frustrating messing around  found I had to   using TortoiseSVN on Windows    Move conflicting folders out of working copy  so that I don t lose my work-in-progress  Do an svn update which added old files folders back into working copy svn delete folder commit Copy new folder back into working copy  ensuring you delete all the  svn folders inside  commit   Unfortunately it  A  requires two commits  and  B  loses file revision history as it only tracks back to the recent re-add  unless someone can explain how to fix this    An alternative solution that works around these 2 issues is to skip steps 3 and 4  the only problem being that old unnecessary files may still be present in your directory   You could delete these manually   Would love to hear any additional insights others might have on this   Simon      Update   OK  I had this same problem again just then  but the offending folder was NOT in the last commit  so an update didn t restore it   Instead I had to browse the repository and delete the offending folder   I could then add the folder back in and commit successfully

User · Answer

I managed to work around it by reverting back to the last version that I had the mysql directory in  then deleting the contents of the directory  putting the new contents in it  and checking the new information back in    Although I m curious if anyone has a better explanation for what the heck was going on there

User · Answer

I had this problem on a project I run on Netbeans   I simply right clicked on the file and update to fix it  after SVN up

User · Answer

already had this type of problem   my solution was   delete the folder from svn but keep a copy of the folder somewhere  commit the changes  in the backup-copy  delete recursively all the  svn-folders in it  for this you might run     bin bash  find -name   svn    while read directory  do     echo  directory      rm -rf   directory   done    delete the local repository and re-check out entire project  don t know whether partial deletion checkout are sufficient   regards

User · Answer

What you need is the svn  export  command  With this you can put a file or entire directory tree in the state of another revision in another branch   So something like  rm file  without  svn  in front  svn export myrepo path to file  lt revision gt    svn commit

User · Answer

Had similar problem  To resolve it  updated from svn trunk with option of priority of local files   svn update path  --accept mine-full   After You could commit as usual  Of course  be careful using it

User · Answer

The problem is that the checkout takes place on a laptop and in this case subversion can not cope with the off-line synchronization  The problem is reproducable on an other laptop while on a desktop I have no problem checking out the same repository   I hope this answer wil help you  it took me quite long to find out

User · Answer

As per Atmocreation s solution  except you don t need to re-checkout the whole project  which is useful if you have existing work in progress   Let s say you have a working copy    foo    which contains directories    foo bar baz   and you re getting the error message on commit    svn  File already exists  filesystem   foo bar    Backup the contents of bar somewhere    mkdir -p   tmp code backup cp -r  foo bar   tmp code backup   Delete the  svn control directories from the backup  Make sure you get this command right  or you can do pretty serious damage   Delete them manually if you re unsure   find   tmp code backup bar -name  svn -type d -exec rm -rf         Double check that the copy is identical   diff -r -x  svn dist   tmp code backup dist   Remove the offending directory from the working copy      cd  foo     rm -rf bar  And then restore it from the repository   cd  foo svn update bar   Copy back the modified files from backup   cp -r   tmp code backup bar  foo    You should now be able to commit without the error

User · Answer

rename the new path to temp revert the new path  not temp   so svn does not try to commit it commit the rest of your changes copy the path inside the repository  svn copy   -m  copied path  -r  update your working copy mv all files from temp to the new path  which comes from the update commit your local changes since revision  Have a nice Day including history  -

User · Answer

I ran into this problem today when Xcode crashed during a branch merge  Somehow the file was uploaded to the svn repository but it wasn t recorded in the svn db properly  I ran the following commands in the directory where the file existed locally   svn revert bad file svn del svn   my svnserver com svnDB path to the offending file bad file   Then I re-added the file from my local system   svn add bad file svn commit -m  Re adding bad file    Success

User · Answer

This situation occured if there are object in repository  which creates by current transaction   Simple scenario    checkout some directory two times  as DIR1 and DIR2 make  svn mkdir test  in both  make commit from DIR1 try to make commit DIR2  without svn up   SVN shall return this error   Same thing when adding same files from two working copies

[svn] Strange problem with Subversion - "File already exists" when trying to recreate a directory that USED to be in my repository

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