title: How can I mark externally deleted files for Subversion deletion?
body: <p>We use Subversion for version control on a project.</p>
  <p>I have a process separate from Subversion that &quot;cleans up&quot; my working copy of the repository by deleting some files that are no longer needed. I would like to mark the deleted files in a script file as deleted for Subversion, so that on my next commit with Tortoise SVN the deletions are automatically selected instead of just being marked as &quot;missing&quot;.</p>
  <p>A similar question was asked in <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11066296/svn-delete-removed-files">svn delete removed files</a>, but the answers proposed there do not work. They suggest using the command</p>
  <pre><code>svn delete filename.txt
  </code></pre>
  <p>When <code>filename.txt</code> has already been deleted, I get an error message:</p>
  <pre><code>svn: E200005: Use --force to override this restriction (local modifications may be lost)
  svn: E200005: 'C:\filename.txt' is not under version control
  </code></pre>
  <p>If I use the <code>--force</code> option, I still get an error message:</p>
  <pre><code>svn: E125001: 'C:\filename.txt' does not exist
  </code></pre>
  <p>One of the reasons for using the external clean-up routine is that some of the files are *.dll's that may currently be in use. Windows prevents their deletion in that case. Only after successful deletion do I want to mark the deletion for a Subversion commit.</p>
  <p>If I do</p>
  <pre><code>svn delete --force filename.dll
  </code></pre>
  <p>directly, when the file is still in use Subversion marks the file for deletion but can't actually delete it and the result is a Subversion data inconsistency that even the Subversion cleanup command can't easily solve.</p>
  <p>Therefore my question:</p>
  <p>How can I mark an already deleted file for Subversion deletion, using the command line?</p>