svn: clean way to replace external with local folder of same name

Question

I have a repository checked out in various places. I have a folder X that is an external to another repository. I want X to be local. There are other questions but they don't seem to have run into my difficulties.

What I did is I edited the svn:externals and removed that line. Then I commited the repo. Then I took the folder, removed all the .svn entries in it (to make it a regular folder), and svn added it, then commited. This worked fine.

However, when I updated another checkout of the repo, I ran into problems. The first error was something like:

UUID mismatch: existing directory XXX was checked out from a different repository.

Ok, already svn up fails, but I try deleting the folder and re-updating. Now it manages re-get all of the contents, but now I get a new error:

Can't remove file XXX: Access is denied

I try updating again, and nothing happens. I delete a file within that folder and update again from the root, nothing happens. I delete the folder X, and nothing happens - so it seems to have just forgotten about it! My only recourse is to delete the root directory of X and re-svn up from a level down (since all this was also happening in a sub folder that was also an external).

Not good.. I don't want to have to do some manual rigamarole on all the sites where this repository is checked out. What to do?

Answer 1

Maybe not the cleanest solution, but it works:

• Remove the external folder in you local copy (DO NOT use svn rm folder)
• Update with the version from the repository

Answer 2

Not sure if it would work, but worth the try.

Try updating to the revision where you deleted the externals, after that make your update to the head.

// XX revision of the externals deletion
svn update -rXX 
// to see if the folder is deleted
svn status
// delete the folder if he is on the local working copy
svn rm folder
// Update to head
svn update