When Subversion modifies your working copy (or any information within .svn), it tries to do so as safely as possible. Before changing the working copy, Subversion writes its intentions to a log file. Next it executes the commands in the log file to apply the requested change, holding a lock on the relevant part of the working copy while it works—to prevent other Subversion clients from accessing the working copy in mid-change. Finally, Subversion removes the log file. Architecturally, this is similar to a journaled filesystem. If a Subversion operation is interrupted (if the process is killed, or if the machine crashes, for example), the log files remain on disk. By re-executing the log files, Subversion can complete the previously started operation, and your working copy can get itself back into a consistent state.

svn cleanupがやるのは、まさにこのことです。 作業コピーを探して、残ったログを実行し、プロセスのロックを 取り除きます。Subversionに作業コピーのどこかが「ロック」 されていると言われたときには、このコマンドを実行してください。 同様にsvn status はロックされているアイテム の隣に L を表示してそのことを示します:

$ svn status
  L    somedir
M      somedir/foo.c

$ svn cleanup
$ svn status
M      somedir/foo.c

Don't confuse these working copy locks with the ordinary locks that Subversion users create when using the 「lock-modify-unlock」 model of concurrent version control; see 「lock」 の三つの意味 for clarification.