A sane way to rename a directory in subversion working copy

While somehow versed in VCS (regular svn, git and git-svn user) I can't seem to wrap my head around this peculiar SVN behavior.

Whenever I need to rename a directory in my SVN working copy from an otherwise 'clean' state - i.e svn status returns nothing and all other modifications have been commited - like so (which is what the svn doc suggests):

svn mv foo bar
svn commit

SVN complains loudly:

Adding         bar
Adding         bar/toto
Deleting       foo
svn: Commit failed (details follow):
svn: Item '/test/foo' is out of date

As you wish:

svn update

Which gives:

   C foo
At revision 46.
Summary of conflicts:
  Tree conflicts: 1

There's a tree conflict, while no third-party change happened. Obviously, the only way to get out of this tree conflict mess is generically (from the svn red book):

svn resolve --accept working -R .
svn commit

Renaming it remotely on the repo then updating my working copy seems quite braindead:

url=$(svn info | grep -e '^URL:' | sed 's/^URL: //') svn mv $url/foo $url/bar
svn update

Is there a sanctioned, more streamlined way to rename a folder that I'm missing? What is the root cause behind that particularly surprising tree conflict state?

svn mv works for me:

C:\svn\co>svn mv my_dir new_dir
A         new_dir
D         my_dir\New Text Document.txt
D         my_dir


C:\svn\co>svn commit -m foo
Raderar             my_dir
Lägger till         new_dir

Arkiverade revision 2.

C:\svn\co>

Sorry for the Swedish output of svn.

There must be something else that is wrong in your case.

Edit:
As pointed out in the comments by Lloeki

To reproduce the behavior you also need to update and commit a file contained in the folder, but not update the folder itself.

> file commit creates a new rev n on the > repo, but local metadata is not > updated (as it has always be, see svn > log after any commit) , thus dir > metadata is at rev n-1. It follows > that svn won't commit because of the > metadata diff, and it won't update > because there's indeed a conflict on > the dir: update metadata vs delete.

The behavior is "expected" and the "solution" is to update the working copy before issuing the svn rename command.

OK, I bumped into this - and can finally reconstruct the problem with a simple terminal session: the problem happens if you svn mv (move/rename) a file; then commit that change; then (without doing an svn update first), svn mv the parent directory of the file whose move/rename was previously committed - and finally do an svn commit on the change of the directory name - or as accepted answer puts it: "you also need to update and commit a file contained in the folder, but not update the folder itself"; but all of this executed in a parent (or rather, ancestor) directory. Here's command line log demonstrating the problem:

$ cd /tmp
$ svnadmin create myrepo
$ svn co file:///tmp/myrepo myrepo-wc
Checked out revision 0.

$ cd myrepo-wc/
$ mkdir -p dir1/dir2/dir3
$ svn add dir1/
A         dir1
A         dir1/dir2
A         dir1/dir2/dir3

$ svn ci -m 'add dir1/'
Adding         dir1
Adding         dir1/dir2
Adding         dir1/dir2/dir3

Committed revision 1.

$ echo test1 >> dir1/dir2/dir3/test1.txt
$ echo test2 >> dir1/dir2/dir3/test2.txt
$ svn add dir1/
svn: warning: 'dir1' is already under version control
$ svn add dir1/*
svn: warning: 'dir1/dir2' is already under version control
$ svn add dir1/dir2/dir3/*
A         dir1/dir2/dir3/test1.txt
A         dir1/dir2/dir3/test2.txt
$ svn status
A       dir1/dir2/dir3/test2.txt
A       dir1/dir2/dir3/test1.txt
$ svn ci -m 'add dir1/dir2/dir3/*'
Adding         dir1/dir2/dir3/test1.txt
Adding         dir1/dir2/dir3/test2.txt
Transmitting file data ..
Committed revision 2.

$ svn mv dir1/dir2/dir3/test2.txt dir1/dir2/dir3/test2X.txt
A         dir1/dir2/dir3/test2X.txt
D         dir1/dir2/dir3/test2.txt
$ svn status
D       dir1/dir2/dir3/test2.txt
A  +    dir1/dir2/dir3/test2X.txt
$ svn ci -m 'mv dir1/dir2/dir3/test2.txt dir1/dir2/dir3/test2X.txt'
Deleting       dir1/dir2/dir3/test2.txt
Adding         dir1/dir2/dir3/test2X.txt

Committed revision 3.

$ svn status
$ svn mv dir1/dir2/dir3 dir1/dir2/dir3X
A         dir1/dir2/dir3X
D         dir1/dir2/dir3/test2X.txt
D         dir1/dir2/dir3/test1.txt
D         dir1/dir2/dir3
$ svn status
D       dir1/dir2/dir3
D       dir1/dir2/dir3/test2X.txt
D       dir1/dir2/dir3/test1.txt
A  +    dir1/dir2/dir3X
D  +    dir1/dir2/dir3X/test2.txt
$ svn ci -m 'mv dir1/dir2/dir3 dir1/dir2/dir3X'
Deleting       dir1/dir2/dir3
svn: Commit failed (details follow):
svn: Directory '/dir1/dir2/dir3' is out of date
$ svn status
D       dir1/dir2/dir3
D       dir1/dir2/dir3/test2X.txt
D       dir1/dir2/dir3/test1.txt
A  +    dir1/dir2/dir3X
D  +    dir1/dir2/dir3X/test2.txt
$ svn up
   C dir1/dir2/dir3
At revision 3.
Summary of conflicts:
  Tree conflicts: 1

And this is how it should have been - doing an svn up after the file move/rename was comitted; note how the version numbers reported by svn status -v change after the svn update command:

$ cd /tmp
$ rm -rf myrepo*

$ svnadmin create myrepo
$ svn co file:///tmp/myrepo myrepo-wc
Checked out revision 0.

$ cd myrepo-wc/
$ mkdir -p dir1/dir2/dir3
$ svn add dir1/
A         dir1
A         dir1/dir2
A         dir1/dir2/dir3
$ svn ci -m 'add dir1/'
Adding         dir1
Adding         dir1/dir2
Adding         dir1/dir2/dir3

Committed revision 1.

$ echo test1 >> dir1/dir2/dir3/test1.txt
$ echo test2 >> dir1/dir2/dir3/test2.txt
$ svn add dir1/dir2/dir3/*
A         dir1/dir2/dir3/test1.txt
A         dir1/dir2/dir3/test2.txt
$ svn status
A       dir1/dir2/dir3/test2.txt
A       dir1/dir2/dir3/test1.txt
$ svn ci -m 'add dir1/dir2/dir3/*'
Adding         dir1/dir2/dir3/test1.txt
Adding         dir1/dir2/dir3/test2.txt
Transmitting file data ..
Committed revision 2.

$ svn mv dir1/dir2/dir3/test2.txt dir1/dir2/dir3/test2X.txt
A         dir1/dir2/dir3/test2X.txt
D         dir1/dir2/dir3/test2.txt
$ svn status
D       dir1/dir2/dir3/test2.txt
A  +    dir1/dir2/dir3/test2X.txt
$ svn ci -m 'mv dir1/dir2/dir3/test2.txt dir1/dir2/dir3/test2X.txt'
Deleting       dir1/dir2/dir3/test2.txt
Adding         dir1/dir2/dir3/test2X.txt

Committed revision 3.

$ svn status
$ svn status -v
                 0        0  ?           .
                 1        1 username dir1
                 1        1 username dir1/dir2
                 1        1 username dir1/dir2/dir3
                 3        3 username dir1/dir2/dir3/test2X.txt
                 2        2 username dir1/dir2/dir3/test1.txt
$ svn up
At revision 3.
$ svn status -v
                 3        3 username .
                 3        3 username dir1
                 3        3 username dir1/dir2
                 3        3 username dir1/dir2/dir3
                 3        3 username dir1/dir2/dir3/test2X.txt
                 3        2 username dir1/dir2/dir3/test1.txt
$ svn mv dir1/dir2/dir3 dir1/dir2/dir3X
A         dir1/dir2/dir3X
D         dir1/dir2/dir3/test2X.txt
D         dir1/dir2/dir3/test1.txt
D         dir1/dir2/dir3
$ svn status
D       dir1/dir2/dir3
D       dir1/dir2/dir3/test2X.txt
D       dir1/dir2/dir3/test1.txt
A  +    dir1/dir2/dir3X
$ svn ci -m 'mv dir1/dir2/dir3 dir1/dir2/dir3X'
Deleting       dir1/dir2/dir3
Adding         dir1/dir2/dir3X

Committed revision 4.

$ svn status
$ svn status -v
                 3        3 username .
                 3        3 username dir1
                 3        3 username dir1/dir2
                 4        4 username dir1/dir2/dir3X
                 4        4 username dir1/dir2/dir3X/test2X.txt
                 4        4 username dir1/dir2/dir3X/test1.txt
$ svn up
At revision 4.
$ svn status -v
                 4        4 username .
                 4        4 username dir1
                 4        4 username dir1/dir2
                 4        4 username dir1/dir2/dir3X
                 4        4 username dir1/dir2/dir3X/test2X.txt
                 4        4 username dir1/dir2/dir3X/test1.txt

And as OP said - should one forget to do the svn update before a new move/rename+commit, and the "Commit failed" occured - then one can use svn resolve --accept working -R . to be able to finish the commit action.

This worked for me:

vi someotherfile
...various changes to the other file
svn mv olddir newdir
svn commit -m"Moved olddir out of the way" olddir
svn commit -m"New location of olddir" newdir
svn update
svn commit -m"Changed someotherfile" someotherfile

I suspect that there were various other possible ways round, and that ensuring there was a clean working directory before doing the svn mv would also have done the trick.

One could think of a scenario where the directory has been changed in the repository by an other user. Renaming the same folder in your working copy may trigger tree conflicts during commit.

Resolving conflicts shows how to resolve 'tree conflicts' in subversion.