svn: cannot rename file 'entries'

techuser — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 10:45:47 +0000

Keywords:

Using an SVN working directory on a Samba share from a Mac? With Subclipse or similar? You may have seen the following message as it bombs during checkout:

I did and Google says others have for the last three years at least.

Examining the files in the .svn directories, I find that the root 'entries' file is created with permissions of -r--r--r--, so naturally a file can't be renamed over it as that requires write permissions.

After a bit of hacking I came up with the following solution, which may or may not be suitable for others. Use with care.

Create a share in Samba specifically for your working directories if you haven't already.

Add these lines to the share definition:
force create mode = 0640
force security mode = 0640

or, if you want world readability (I don't, hence 640..):

force create mode = 0644
force security mode = 0644

Now everything you write to that share will be forced as writable (at least -rw-r-----) by your user account. This fixes the SVN bug.

I say 'SVN bug', but it could be Subclipse, the Java SVN library, Samba,... I don't know.

Technological Wanderings - svn

svn: cannot rename file 'entries'