Using Subversion I try to commit with:
svn ci dir/filename
And I get this:
svn: system('emacs svn-commit.tmp') returned 256
What does this mean? How can I to fix it?
When you try to commit something to Subversion, it needs a commit comment. Unless you pass a commit comment on the command line (using -m message), Subversion will automatically launch your preferred editor. It appears that your editor is emacs, but there is a problem launching it.
Either fix emacs, or set your EDITOR or SVN_EDITOR environment variables to a different editor that actually works.
Possibly related: I'm seeing similar errors on vim when setting SVN_EDITOR without the qualifying the path. From your error output, I see you have done the same with emacs. Try export SVN_EDITOR=/usr/bin/emacs. Doing the same with /usr/bin/vim eliminated the 256 status codes.
I can't explain why. Seems like a bug to me.
See this 2009 discussion about vim on OSX 10.5.
Looks like svn is not able to launch emacs for editing the comments for the commit.
If you just hava a few words of comments for your commit you could use:
svn ci dir/filename -m "Made some small changes"
another option might be to use the --editor-cmd option of svn. see svn help ci for details.
googling svn: system('emacs svn-commit.tmp') returned 256 shows the following link as the first result.
http://jjinux.blogspot.com/2008/03/vim-weird-os-x-105-problem.html
It sounds like SVN tried to invoke emacs to allow you to edit the commit log message, and something failed.
Workaround: use the -m flag to specify a commit message on the command line:
svn ci dir/filename -m "log message here"
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2008609/getting-error-trying-to-commit-using-subversion-on-mac-os-x