Unable to commit to Subversion

Question

I have a client who had to rebuild his automated build server. He checked out his project folder from my subversion server but is now no longer able to commit - he gets this error:

Error: Commit failed (details follow):   Error: Cannot write to the prototype revision file of transaction '551-1' because a    Error: previous representation is currently being written by another process   Finished!:    

I have searched Google but although this error has been often reported there is no clear explanation - does anyone on StackOverflow have a solution?

UPDATE: Nobody else commits to that repository, so it was not a transaction stuck (at least not from another user). In the end we found that permissions were not set correctly. Not that you would know it from this message, but that fixed the problem.

Answer 1

You can clear this error w/out a reboot:

1. Identify (or create) a directory in the root SVN repository that was not a part of the failed commit.

2. Create a new file in the directory from step 1.

3. Commit the new file (and directory if created in step 1). Because the file is new, it doesn't conflict w/the previous commit and can update the revision # on the server.

4. Commit the original files/directories.

5. Delete the new file (and directory if created in step 1).

6. Commit the entire tree.

**Steps 5 & 6 aren't required, but I like to keep my repository tidy...

I get this error a lot b/c SVN frequently conks out in the middle of committing my large files, which in turn causes subsequent commits to try to write to the revision that was interrupted.