svn: Can’t move /.svn/tmp/entries: Operation not permitted

Another weird SVN error. I keep telling myself I need to re-checkout a clean version of the svn repository, or better yet export to code, or even better use git.

Regardless I found an obscure post with the solution. I had the problem again, couldn’t find the post so here we go again. May need sudo privileges

I’ve replaced directory path with {folder root} for generic purposes.

Error

$ svn commit -m "testing commit"
svn: Commit failed (details follow):
svn: Can't move '{folder root}/.svn/tmp/entries' to '{folder root}/.svn/entries': Operation not permitted

Solution

$ chflags -R nouchg ./

What does this magic do? This changes the immutable flag on the file that allows for editing of the hidden files. The commit should now work.

Unknown is how changing an immutable flag affects the windows system it runs on. I am using terminal to access a samba mounted drive on /Volumes.

Author’s Note

Initial md Generated using https://github.com/jsr6720/wordpress-html-scraper-to-md

Original Wordpress categories: [‘SVN’]

Original Wordpress tags: “SVN”, “commit failed”, “svn commit”, “svn terminal”

Original Wordpress comments: None

Significant revisions

tags: 2011, wordpress, txcowboycoder, svn, error-messages, commit-failed

May 6th, 2024 Converted to jekyll markdown format and copied to personal site
Jan 10th, 2011 Originally published on txcowboycoder wordpress site