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When I try to update a sub folder of my project, tortoise SVN gives me the error 

Working copy "c:\project\extensions" locked.
"c:\project\extensions" is already locked

I've tried to cleanup from the \extensions level and also the c:\project level, both of which give me-

Cleanup failed to process the following paths:
c:\projects
Symbolic links are not supported on this platform

What is going on?

Nakilon
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NathanBarley
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3 Answers3

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Although Subversion can version symbolic links, Subversion on Windows does not support them (true symlink support didn't come to NTFS until Windows 7 was released). One of the other users of your repository has apparently created, added & committed one or more symlinks.

In place of the symlink, IIRC Subversion will give you a text file with a note inside telling you where that symlink points to.

You will need to ask the other users to remove the symlinks, possibly replacing them with file-level externals to simulate the behavior. It's not ideal, but it's all you can really do for now if you'll have Windows clients using the repository

alroc
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    Thanks - this answer is absolutely correct. It's annoying that things like this can happen! – NathanBarley Apr 21 '13 at 18:33
  • Can you please help me out here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22980708/svn-symbolic-links-are-not-supported-on-this-platform-windows-8-1 – user2056563 Apr 10 '14 at 10:05
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    Junction support (symlinks for directories) existed since NTFS 3, which appeard in Windows 2000, 15 years ago. Symlinks for files, appeard in NTFS 5 in Windows Vista, 9 years ago. I just think svn or/and tortoise developpers are simply bone idle. They lost motivation since git killed them maybe ? – v.oddou Jan 22 '15 at 02:13
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It looks like now this issue is caused by OneDrive syncing a file in question which appears as a symlink to TortoiseSVN. I resolved it by copying the file to a non-One Drive backed location, updating SVN from there, and all worked.

Arthur
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Symbolic links are supported as of TortoiseSVN 1.8. It appears that this error message is a left over from days when they were not supported. Should be reported to the devs to adjust it.

user2714849
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    I've been trying to find any info on windows symlink support in SVN 1.8, but I have come up empty so far, do you have any links with details? – Blake Mitchell Sep 09 '13 at 23:03
  • I have tortoise 1.8.2 with svn 1.8.3 on windows 7, and I tell you, it is still not supported. still whining. – v.oddou Jan 22 '15 at 02:11