"File exists" error means that the file is re-created after you delete it
but before 'ln'. The fact that you were able to achieve re-linking by
combining two commands into one (rm ... && ln ...) suggests that there is
something invoking 'svn' periodically (cron job?).
As far as I know, Subversion does not have any special logic for config
file protection. However, it does re-create this file with default
settings if it does not find one when 'svn' command is invoked.
Regards,
Alexey.
On Thursday 04 March 2010 05:13:49 am Alan Brogan wrote:
> Hello the list,
>
> I just lost a few hours trying to do this:
>
> $ cd ~/.subversion
> $ rm -f config
> $ ln -s /path/to/another/config .
>
> The link command kept failing, because "File exists"
> WTF ?
>
> Turns out I cannot remove ~/.subversion/* in one command, as some other
> process is protecting them from deletion (but not from editing).
>
> Eventually I did figure out the workaround, which is simply to join
> them into one command $ rm -f config && ln -s /path/to/another/config .
>
> But it was a £*({ing annoying few hours between problem arising and
> finding solution (and even more annoying that the solution was so
> simple)
>
> I can find no documentation of this feature at
> http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.5/
> http://subversion.apache.org/faq.html
> http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/subversion-users/
> so, I would like to ask:
>
> a) where is it documented ?
> b) can it be extended to other user-configurable directories ?
>
> Thank you for reading this far, and any writing you might be able to
> do.
