Re: Problems cloning existing (probably old) svn repo

From: Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net>
Date: Dec 3, 2014, 22:15 UTC
Message-ID: <20141203221532.GA30452@dcvr.yhbt.net>
In-Reply-To: <CADq_+R2t+ZprZj83TKJaWDpTtF+LwSZPTPc8vOYuDz9gkLDS-w@mail.gmail.com>

Cody Goodman <codygman.consulting@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> I recently got this error when trying to git svn clone an existing repo:
> 
> Couldn't open a repository: Unable to connect to a repository at URL
> 'file:///home/cody/work/SmartPay': Unable to open an ra_local session
> to URL: Unable to open repository 'file:///home/cody/work/SmartPay' at
> /usr/share/perl5/Git/SVN.pm line

What happens when you try using the plain SVN client?

	svn co file:///home/cody/work/SmartPay foo

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> Then I created my own new svn repo to ensure my install of svn-git was working:
> 
> cody@cody-XPS-L521X:~/svn-repos$ svnadmin create testrepo
> cody@cody-XPS-L521X:~/svn-repos$ svnserve -d -r /home/cody/svn-repos
> cody@cody-XPS-L521X:~/svn-repos$ cd /tmp
> cody@cody-XPS-L521X:/tmp$ git svn clone svn://localhost/testrepo
> Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/testrepo/.git/
> 
> So I've verified my install is working and I understand how to clone a
> local repo.
> 
> What svn repo versions is git-svn compatible with? If the svnadmin
> version used to create the existing repo I want to clone was very old
> is that what is giving me the error? Is there a workaround?

git-svn uses the SVN Perl bindings which are wrappers around libsvn, the same library the regular "svn" command uses. So if it works with plain svn, it should work with git-svn.

> How should I proceed?

I'd make sure the plain SVN-only tools work on your repo, first. Perhaps try "svnadmin dump" and "svnadmin load", too.