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OSX SVN woes: client is too old to work with working copy

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If you are caught somewhere between subversion 1.4  and 1.5 then you’ll suddenly find yourself one day presented with the message: 

svn: This client is too old to work with working copy; please get a newer Subversion client

I originally found myself here while beta testing a new subversion client and inadvertently clicking “yes” I want to upgrade my working directory. But that’s another story. Here’s what I did (I’m running Mac OSX 10.5 Leopard):

 

  1. Download and install the Subversion 1.5 binaries from OpenCollabNet (via http://subversion.tigris.org/getting.html#osx). Once you download the .dmg, simply run the installer like you’d normally do any installer. You’d imagine that this would be all but it’s not because the new subversion installs to /opt/subversion/bin rather than /usr/bin.
  2. Update your path by either editing the “~/.profile” (for your individual user profile) or “/etc/profile” (for all system users). I chose to do this for my system as I used several accounts for different purposes. If the file doesn’t exist you need to create it. Then add the following line to the top of the file: 
    export PATH=/opt/subversion:$PATH
  3. Finally, rename the previous svn executable. You may find that you still cannot access subversion 1.5 if the 1.4 file is still available. Navigate to your /usr/bin folder and rename the old svn located there:
  4. Now when running svn –version you should see the 1.5 client referenced.
$ svn --version svn, version 1.5.2 (r32768)
  compiled Sep 19 2008, 14:38:15
  Copyright (C) 2000-2008 CollabNet.
  Subversion is open source software, see http://subversion.tigris.org/
 This product includes software developed by CollabNet (http://www.Collab.Net/).
 

 

  • neilwatters
    Even easier, install macports and run following command in terminal:

    sudo port install subversion

    After install check version has been updated with:

    svn --version
  • Hey, (for 1.6 anway) the path should be "export PATH=/opt/subversion/bin:$PATH"

    and you need to log out and log back in again for it to work :)
  • Just in addition to Paul's comment, you actually should just need to update your environment variables like so (rather than logging in/out):

    source ~/.profile

    cheers. :)
  • Thanks Buddy
  • Anastasios
    export PATH=/opt/subversion:$PATH

    should be

    export PATH=/opt/subversion/bin:$PATH
  • Thanks for this, it solved 99% of my problem :)

    The other issue I has was my PATH was set in numerous files and .profile is checked last

    http://johnnywey.wordpress.com/2008/04/17/fixin...
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