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 where the "clean up" worked, but the "update" would continue to fail. The solution that worked was to delete the folder in question via Windows Explorer, not TortoiseSVN's delete (which marks the deletion as something to commit to the repository, and then I did a "checkout" to essentially "update" the folder from the respository.

More info on the difference between an O/S delete and an SVN delete here: http://tortoisesvn.net/docs/release/TortoiseSVN_en/tsvn-dug-rename.html

Notably:

When you TortoiseSVN → Delete a file, it is removed from your working copy immediately as well as being marked for deletion in the repository on next commit.

And:

If a file is deleted via the explorer instead of using the TortoiseSVN context menu, the commit dialog shows those files and lets you remove them from version control too before the commit. However, if you update your working copy, Subversion will spot the missing file and replace it with the latest version from the repository.

Answer 2

Easiest way ever:

1. Go to Parent directory(Folder) of Project.
2. Pres Right click
3. Press on TortoiseSVN then Press Clean up...
4. Clean up dialog would appear automatically
5. Select Clean up working copy status, Break locks, Fix time stamps, Vacuum pristine copies, Refresh shell overlays, Include externals
6. Pres OK

You did your job successfully.

Check the screen shots for your reference.

First step:

Second step: Enable the Break lock option(second check box in cleanup popup window)

Hope this will help you a lot.

Answer 3

For me, it was actually Tortoise's fault, sort of. Tortoise just complained "cannot clean up, run clean up", but when I ran the command line (svn cleanup), it clearly told me that it couldn't delete some files that were in use, the solution to which was obvious. Once I closed Visual Studio (which was keeping the files open), then the cleanup worked fine.

Other programs can also keep files open in the repo causing this issue. Excel holding an xls open was a culprit in another instance so it may be wise to close all programs that may be using anything in the repo or even rebooting to force programs to close out and then trying cleanup again.

Answer 4

I came across the exact same issue using SVN 1.7 and none of the fixes mentioned above worked.

Foremost, make sure you backup all your edited content.

After spending a couple of hours (didn't redownload everything as my branch is over 6gb in size), I found that there is a db file called "wc" in the .svn folder of your branch.

Open up the db file using any db manager (i used firefox's sqlite manager plugin) and navigate to WC_LOCK table. This table will have the entries for the acquired locks. Delete the records from the table and you're done :)

Answer 5

I did it by just creating a new folder, checking out the project, copying the updated files to the new folder.

It was fixed with a fresh checkout.

Answer 6

To do the clean up

1. Delete the .svn folder.

2. Do the svncheckout in the root folder.

3. Try performing the clean up operation.

This got my issue resolved.