Usability issue: svn export of nonexistent directory reports "Cannot replace a directory from within"

[Richard Tibbetts <ti...@alum.MIT.EDU>]

I'm new to subversion. I was just working with svn export for the
first time, and accidentally called export on a nonexistent directory
in the repository. This got me the unhelpful error message "Cannot
replace a directory from within," which lead me to thinking I had
corrupted the repository or something similarly unfortunate. Of
course, it turns out I was just trying to export a nonexistant
directory. It would be nice if there were more arguments checking or
error handling, such that a more informative error could be generated.

I observed this behavior on both subversion 1.0.6 with a 1.1.1 ssh+svn
server, and with 1.1.1 against the same server. I then wrote a script
to reproduce it locally and that worked against 1.1.1. I've attached
the script. I'm happy to provide any other information that would be
helpful.

I'm not on dev@subversion, though I will try to keep track of
discussion via the archives.

Richard Tibbetts

Re: Usability issue: svn export of nonexistent directory reports "Cannot replace a directory from within"

[kf...@collab.net]

Richard Tibbetts <ti...@alum.MIT.EDU> writes:
> I'm new to subversion. I was just working with svn export for the
> first time, and accidentally called export on a nonexistent directory
> in the repository. This got me the unhelpful error message "Cannot
> replace a directory from within," which lead me to thinking I had
> corrupted the repository or something similarly unfortunate. Of
> course, it turns out I was just trying to export a nonexistant
> directory. It would be nice if there were more arguments checking or
> error handling, such that a more informative error could be generated.
> 
> I observed this behavior on both subversion 1.0.6 with a 1.1.1 ssh+svn
> server, and with 1.1.1 against the same server. I then wrote a script
> to reproduce it locally and that worked against 1.1.1. I've attached
> the script. I'm happy to provide any other information that would be
> helpful.
> 
> I'm not on dev@subversion, though I will try to keep track of
> discussion via the archives.

I just get this error, using your script:

   "svn: No such file or directory"

This is with Subversion 1.2.x (almost rc3, the candidate which will be
released tomorrow).

-Karl

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