title: svn: clean way to replace external with local folder of same name
body: <p>I have a repository checked out in various places. I have a folder X that is an external to another repository. I want X to be local. There are other questions but they don't seem to have run into my difficulties.</p>
  
  <p>What I did is I edited the svn:externals and removed that line. Then I commited the repo. Then I took the folder, removed all the <code>.svn</code> entries in it (to make it a regular folder), and <code>svn add</code>ed it, then commited. This worked fine.</p>
  
  <p>However, when I updated another checkout of the repo, I ran into problems. The first error was something like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>UUID mismatch: existing directory XXX was checked out from a different repository.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Ok, already <code>svn up</code> fails, but I try deleting the folder and re-updating. Now it manages re-get all of the contents, but now I get a new error:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Can't remove file XXX: Access is denied
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I try updating again, and nothing happens. I delete a file within that folder and update again from the root, nothing happens. I delete the folder X, and nothing happens - so it seems to have just forgotten about it! My only recourse is to delete the root directory of X and re-<code>svn up</code> from a level down (since all this was also happening in a sub folder that was also an external).</p>
  
  <p>Not good.. I don't want to have to do some manual rigamarole on all the sites where this repository is checked out. What to do?</p>