How to rename a file using svn?

Question

When I try svn mv old_file_name new_file_name, I get

 svn: Path 'new_file_name' is not a directory

What's the correct way? (sorry, this seems so trivial, but I'm stuck).

PS. using svn version 1.6.11

EDIT it seems I get this error only if new_file_name refers to the name of a file that is currently under version control. In this case, of course, I can simply

 mv old_file_name new_file_name
 svn delete old_file_name

Tumble

Maybe you need the full repository path, file://... or svn://... or http://... to the file. – Wordy

Answer 1

The behaviour differs depending on whether the target file name already exists or not. It's usually a safety mechanism, and there are at least 3 different cases:

Target file does not exist:

In this case svn mv should work as follows:

$ svn mv old_file_name new_file_name
A         new_file_name
D         old_file_name
$ svn stat
A  +    new_file_name
        > moved from old_file_name
D       old_file_name
        > moved to new_file_name
$ svn commit
Adding     new_file_name
Deleting   old_file_name
Committing transaction...

Target file already exists in repository:

In this case, the target file needs to be removed explicitly, before the source file can be renamed. This can be done in the same transaction as follows:

$ svn mv old_file_name new_file_name 
svn: E155010: Path 'new_file_name' is not a directory
$ svn rm new_file_name 
D         new_file_name
$ svn mv old_file_name new_file_name 
A         new_file_name
D         old_file_name
$ svn stat
R  +    new_file_name
        > moved from old_file_name
D       old_file_name
        > moved to new_file_name
$ svn commit
Replacing      new_file_name
Deleting       old_file_name
Committing transaction...

In the output of svn stat, the R indicates that the file has been replaced, and that the file has a history.

Target file already exists locally (unversioned):

In this case, the content of the local file would be lost. If that's okay, then the file can be removed locally before renaming the existing file.

$ svn mv old_file_name new_file_name 
svn: E155010: Path 'new_file_name' is not a directory
$ rm new_file_name 
$ svn mv old_file_name new_file_name 
A         new_file_name
D         old_file_name
$ svn stat
A  +    new_file_name
        > moved from old_file_name
D       old_file_name
        > moved to new_file_name
$ svn commit
Adding         new_file_name
Deleting       old_file_name
Committing transaction...

Prose

I needed to add --force to svn rm new_file_name as it complained that new_file is is not under version control. – Ionosphere

.. and I had to create an empty file called new_file_name. – Ionosphere

on 1.8.3 rm removes the physical file, just running the "svn mv ..." was sufficient, it executes that A D. – Friedrich

It is funny how old SVN is and how awkward it is to rename a file using it. – Decarburize

@Ghasan: The title of the question might be misleading. It's about removing one file and renaming another file at the same time. This use case is not that common, and a bit tricky with most VCS, in particular if the information should be visible in the history. – Prose

For me simply typing svn mv old_file_name new_file_name did the trick. Then I checked it with stat and committed it. (I was renaming a file, that already existed.) Very helpful, thank you. – Antoniaantonie

Answer 2

Using TortoiseSVN worked easily on Windows for me.

http://tortoisesvn.net/

Right click file -> TortoiseSVN menu -> Repo-browser -> right click file in repository -> rename -> press Enter -> click Ok

Using SVN 1.8.8 TortoiseSVN version 1.8.5

Olli

Not that the OP was asking about Windows, but upvotes deserve extension: Full desktop integration means that you may simply do this in the context menu from Explorer. – Privily

But now I see that posting a Windows answer on what is clearly a Linux question has gotten this one down-voted several time. (drats, time ran out for me to edit my original comment) – Privily

I was using Cygwin on Windows at the time, so there was some crossover. – Olli

I couldn't get it to work without using TortoiseSVN on Windows. So I am thankful for this answer. I upvoted you. Using anything else kept causing it to revert anytime I updated. In my case the change was capitalization of the file names. I think the issue in my case stems from the fact that Windows is case insensitive. – Manned

This worls, but you will lose the history of the file. – Lw

Then, what happen with users that have old_file_name on their working copy? – Davao

Answer 3

This message will appear if you are using a case-insensitive file system (e.g. on a Mac) and you're trying to capitalize the name (or another change of case). In which case you need to rename to a third, dummy, name:

svn mv file-name file-name_
svn mv file-name_ FILE_Name
svn commit

Unmoving

And I was wondering why it works on Linux but not on Mac. Thanks! – Putup

Answer 4

It can be if you created new directory at the disk BEFORE create/commit it in the SVN. All that you need is just create it in SVN and do move after:

$ svn mv etc/nagios/hosts/us0101/cs/us0101ccs001.cfg etc/nagios/hosts/us0101/ccs/
svn: E155010: Path '/home/dyr/svn/nagioscore/etc/nagios/hosts/us0101/ccs' is not a directory

$ svn status
?       etc/nagios/hosts/us0101/ccs

$ rm -rvf etc/nagios/hosts/us0101/ccs
removed directory 'etc/nagios/hosts/us0101/ccs'

$ svn mkdir etc/nagios/hosts/us0101/ccs
A         etc/nagios/hosts/us0101/ccs

$ svn move etc/nagios/hosts/us0101/cs/us0101ccs001.cfg etc/nagios/hosts/us0101/ccs/us0101accs001.cfg
A         etc/nagios/hosts/us0101/ccs/us0101accs001.cfg
D         etc/nagios/hosts/us0101/cs/us0101ccs001.cfg

$ svn status
A       etc/nagios/hosts/us0101/ccs
A  +    etc/nagios/hosts/us0101/ccs/us0101accs001.cfg
        > moved from etc/nagios/hosts/us0101/cs/us0101ccs001.cfg
D       etc/nagios/hosts/us0101/cs/us0101ccs001.cfg
        > moved to etc/nagios/hosts/us0101/ccs/us0101accs001.cfg

Lanlana