Re: Confusing error: "Cannot replace a directory from within"

On Wed, 2007-05-09 at 20:54 -0700, C. Michael Pilato wrote:
> I would agree that this is never a useful error message. I think fixing
> this message alone would go 80% of the way of solving the problem.

The error message is basically correct, just not very helpful. If you
run, from outside the directory:

  svn switch svn://nonexistent-url dirname

then the switch will succeed:

  D dirname

However, from inside the directory, we cannot perform that operation;
thus "cannot replace a directory [with a file, or with nothing] from
within".

Okay, "deleting" and "replacing [with nothing]" are arguably different
things. But I don't think the message would be much more helpful if we
said "Cannot replace or delete a directory from within," or even if we
returned two different messages for the two different cases.

Really, should svn switch to a nonexistent URL ever get as far as an
editor drive? Is the behavior from outside the working dir correct? I
tend to think the problem is in the higher-level code.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@subversion.tigris.org
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@subversion.tigris.org
Received on Thu May 10 06:08:24 2007