'.' is not a working copy error and resolution

One of our users came across a strange error trying to commit recently (with a 1.6 client):

Action Path Mime type
Command Commit
Error Commit failed (details follow):
Error '.' is not a working copy
Finished!

On seeing this, you might think the directory he tried to commit had no .svn directory. But it did.

After some investigation, it turned out that the parent directory (which was the C:\ root directory) had its own .svn directory. He had accidentally done some sort of root-level checkout or move of a .svn directory to be under there. I believe the result was that Subversion was seeing everything on that drive as not part of the working copy. And indeed he couldn't commit from anything that he believed to be a Subversion working copy.

I understand that it was correct behavior for him to get a failure trying to commit, but I wanted to provide this information in case it's helpful to other users, and in case the developers want to change this sort of error to be more helpful, for example to indicate something about detecting a nested working copy, and including the two directories that conflict (the "real" WC root as well as the directory that is illegally nested).

Note that I don't think this use case will be obsolete even in 1.7 because I believe there will still be .svn directories directly under the WC root.

--Todd

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Received on 2010-02-10 23:06:29 CET