Can't commit svn controlled directory when referencing through symlink

Question

I have a problem that I describe poorly in another question. I'm posting this to make it more clear what I want to do, and what problem I'm encountering. There is a highly-voted answer, but it doesn't actually address my problem (short story: I'm not trying to add a symlinked directory to my version-controlled project).

If you already know how subversion works, skip to below to get the actual question.

I am at the command line, and the current working directory is my home directory.

$> pwd
/home/user

I have an svn project. Let's say it's called some_project. I want to check the project out to real_directory/.

$> svn checkout http://svnhost.net/some_project real_directory
A    real_directory/index.php
...
A    real_directory/robots.txt
Checked out revision 1143.

I haven't cded into that directory; I'm still outside of it, in my home directory: $> pwd /home/user

Yet I can still use svn commands on files real_directory/, even though it's not my current working directory

$> svn status real_directory/
$> touch real_directory/new_file.txt
$> svn status real_directory/
?      real_directory/new_file.txt
$> svn add real_directory/new_file.txt
A         real_directory/new_file.txt

I'm pointing this out to clarify misconceptions presented in the other question. Note that I added a file to the project, while still outside of the version-controlled directory. I can do this because of the existence of the .svn/ directory in the real_directory directory. This is what makes real_directory/ contain the some_project subversion project, even though it has a different name.

$> ls real_directory/.svn
all-wcprops  entries  format  prop-base  props  text-base  tmp

( If you already know this, please bear with me -- my original question had a well-voted answer that gave wrong information about the ability to do this with subversion! )

This is the syntax of the svn command:

svn [svn-controlled directory] command

If you don't specify the directory, svn will assume you're talking about the current directory. So all of these are equivalent (current working directory is in the shell prompt):

[ /home/user ]$ svn status real_directory/
A      real_directory/new_file.txt
[ /home/user ]$ cd real_directory/
[ /home/user/real_directory ]$ svn status .
A      new_file.txt
[ /home/user/real_directory ]$ svn status
A      new_file.txt

So, to recap: I can do anything I want while not inside the version controlled directory, just as if I were inside of it, simply by specifying the directory when I issue my svn commands.

OK, now that that's out of the way, here's the problem:

When I create a symlink to the subversion controlled directory, svn recognizes it for commands such as add and status, but not for commit!

Here is the symlink directory working just like the real directory when I add files and ask its status:

$> svn status real_directory/
A      real_directory/new_file.txt
$> ln -s real_directory/ symlink
$> svn status symlink
A      symlink/new_file.txt
$> svn status real_directory/
A      real_directory/new_file.txt
$> touch symlink/another_new_file.txt
$> svn status symlink
?      symlink/another_new_file.txt
A      symlink/new_file.txt
$> svn add symlink/another_new_file.txt
A         symlink/another_new_file.txt
$> svn status symlink/
A      symlink/another_new_file.txt
A      symlink/new_file.txt

See how symlink/ acts just like real_directory/ for the purposes of add and status? Problem: this fails on the commit command:

$> svn commit symlink/ -m "test commit"
svn: '/home/user' is not a working copy
svn: Can't open file '/home/user/.svn/entries': No such file or directory

Huh? That's weird. Svn certainly thinks that file exists when I do status and add! Maybe it got deleted?

$> ls symlink/.svn/entries
symlink/.svn/entries

Nope, still there. Does it still have data in it?

$> ls -lha !$
ls -lha symlink/.svn/entries
-r--r--r-- 1 user group 14K 2009-12-18 06:36 symlink/.svn/entries

Yup, seems to be okay! Alright, forget trying to commit the directory by its symlink. What about just committing the directory by its real name?

$> svn commit real_directory/ -m "test commit"
Adding         real_directory/another_new_file.txt
Adding         real_directory/new_file.txt
Transmitting file data ..
Committed revision 1144.

Works fine. Why does svn work with add and status on a symlinked directory, but not commit?

Answer 1

I posted to the mailing list and got a good answer.

Since the symlink is actually a filesystem file, what's happening is that svn thinks that I'm trying to commit that symlink as a file for a project in the current directory -- basically what Ire originally thought I wanted to do!

The proper thing to do is

svn commit symbolic_link/*

Answer 2

Not an answer: I'm having a similar problem, but also with "svn update". The "symlink/*" answer above has limitations. It won't work if the directory contains sub-directories, and I don't think it will make "update" create any newly added files.