Subversion Tip of the Week

Cleaning up your Working Copy

Before Apache Subversion begins modifying your working copy, it creates a “to do” list and locks the relevant part of the working copy while it performs an update. When Subversion has completed its modifications, it releases the lock and cleans up the “to do” list. However, if this process is interrupted (for example, the network connection is lost, or your computer crashes) then the “to do” list isn’t deleted. Before you can continue working on your project, you must run an ‘SVN Cleanup’ that instructs Subversion to complete any outstanding items on its “to do” list and finally, remove the lock on the working copy.

1) To run an ‘SVN Cleanup,’ select ‘Clean up…’ from the TortoiseSVN menu.

2) ‘Clean up working copy status’ is the basic option that will attempt to get your working copy into a workable and usable state. But, TortoiseSVN will present you with some additional options:

• Revert all changes recursively – reverts all the local modifications that have not yet been committed to the repository. Tip: if you need to specify exactly which files to revert, you should use the ‘TortoiseSVN – Revert’ command.
• Delete all unversioned files and folders - sends all files not under version control to the recycle bin.
• Delete ignored files and folders – moves all ignored files/folders to the recycle bin.
• Refresh shell overlays – one of the useful features of TortoiseSVN, is that it overlays repository files with status icons that tell you the current state of each file.

Sometimes these overlays won’t display the most up-to-date status. In this situation, ‘Refresh shell overlays’ should be used to force a refresh.

3) Once you have selected your options, select ‘Ok.’ You should now see a message informing you that your cleanup has been successful.

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