I get this svn error quite often since changing my development environment to ubuntu, because I never got this error while I working on windows. This error was really sucks before I got the solution. Everytime I commit my works this error occurs. Then, why the directory is known as not working copy? In linux there are file and directory permissions where both of them can be different. So far, I see that the file permission is the cause of this error.
I previously used very bad solution to deal with this error. I copied the project directory, delete the repository and export again the backup to the repository. It would be very bad idea to do this every time I get the error. So this is what I got after the tiring searching.
For instance, I have a directory works/ that is known as “not a working copy”. To resolve the error then do these steps:
- Make sure that the directory permission is correct (same with another working directory). Use
chowncommand to take the ownership orchmodto change the permission. Don’t forget to use -R option to apply the changes to the whole directory. - Rename the directory.
mv works/ works_/
(it can be any name).
- Revert the svn.
svn revert works/
- Clean up the working directory.
svn cleanup
- Rename again the directory to the original name.
mv works_/ works/
- Add the directory to svn.
svn add works/
- Clean up once again.
- Finally commit the changes.
svn commit works/


