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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-16T07:40:51+00:00

I have made this mistake several times, and found myself referencing This Post every

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I have made this mistake several times, and found myself referencing This Post every time I do it.

I have an SVN repository with Assembla, and a local copy checked out on my machine. When I manually overwrite directories via my OS (i.e. drag and drop a directory over the old one), and then try to SVN ADD and SVN COMMIT I get the ‘.’ is not a working copy error.

Reading the linked post, I understand the error (I think), but what is the right way to do this so I don’t have to untangle this error every time? I’m not using an SVN GUI like Tortoise SVN, just the OSX terminal, if that makes a difference. Is there a command that I can use? Feel free to just point me to the documentation, but I googled for it and couldn’t find anything. I saw SVN COPY, but that says it only works within a working copy, and I want to copy something from my OS over a working copy directory.

Any thoughts? Thank you!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I’ve read this over and over and I still don’t understand. The SVN ADD and SVN COMMIT commands are the SVN client software. What do you mean “I’m not using an SVN client, just the OSX terminal”?

    What do you mean “What’s the right way to overwrite a directory in my SVN repository?” — are you trying to delete a directory? If so, do SVN DEL on your working copy and then commit.

    Are you trying to add files to your repository? If so, use drag-n-drop or “cp/mv” commands and put them into your working copy. Then SVN ADD them then SVN COMMIT.

    SVN maintains its working copies by virtue of hidden “.svn” directories which contain configuration information. If you remove those, then you get “‘.’ is not a working copy” errors. You must not delete or modify the .svn directories.

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