Working copy XXX locked and cleanup failed in SVN

Question

I get this error when I do an svn update:

Working copy XXXXXXXX locked Please execute \"Cleanup\" command

When I

Answer 1

I had this problem because external folders do not want to be linked into an existing folder. If you add an svn:externals property line where the destination is an existing (versioned or non-versioned) folder, you will get the SVN Woring Copy locked error. Here a cleanup will also tell you that everthing is all right but still updating won't work.

Solution: Delete the troubling folder from the repository and make an update in the root folder where the svn:externals property is set. This will create the folder and all will be fine again.

This problem arose for me because svn:externals for files requires the destination folder to be version controlled. After I noticed that this doesn't work across different repositories, I swaped from external files to external folder and got into this mess.