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Subversion on Debian ARM: commit failing with space in URL
Sep 16th, 2014 by miki

Working on a Beaglebone Black based product, running the latest Debian GNU/Linux system image (bone-debian-7.5-2014-05-14-2gb.img) from the BB HQ at beagleboard.org I just had the following strange experience.

Using Subversion I wanted to commit a change to a file made locally on the BBB. The file resided  in a working copy of a repository on which I had done the initial work on my x86_64 laptop. The working copy was checked out and updated on the BBB without any problems, but comitting I got the following error:

debian@beaglebone:~/VCAS_FR$ svn ci rc.local -m"Append to vncserver.log."
Authentication realm: <https://svn.xx.xx> Subversion Repository
Password for 'yaya': 
Sending        rc.local
Transmitting file data .svn: Commit failed (details follow):
svn: File not found: transaction '414-1', path '/trunk/BBB%20deployment/rc.local'
debian@beaglebone:~/VCAS_FR$

This failed repeatedly, and checking out a fresh new working copy exhibited the same result.

For the fun of it, because file name issues are long gone in my everyday computing life, I tried to remove the space from the directory path. And voila, unexpectedly it succeeded!

debian@beaglebone:~/VCAS_FR$ svn ci rc.local -m"Append to vncserver.log."
Authentication realm: <https://svn.xx.xx> Subversion Repository
Password for 'yaya': 
Sending        rc.local
Transmitting file data .
Committed revision 416.
debian@beaglebone:~/VCAS_FR$

Without spaces, things actually did work. Apparently there’s an issue with ARM built subversion and repositories containing spaces.

URL before

debian@beaglebone:~/VCAS_FR$ svn info | grep URL
URL: https://svn.xx.xx/trunk/BBB%20deployment
debian@beaglebone:~/VCAS_FR$

URL after

debian@beaglebone:~/VCAS_FR$ svn info | grep URL
URL: https://svn.xx.xx/trunk/BBB_deployment
debian@beaglebone:~/VCAS_FR$

Investigating a bit further narrowed down that the Debian distribution uses an old (old, old) subversion 1.6.17 release from 2009:

debian@beaglebone:~/VCAS_FR$ svn --version
svn, version 1.6.17 (r1128011)
   compiled Mar 15 2014, 21:37:31

Copyright (C) 2000-2009 CollabNet.
Subversion is open source software, see http://subversion.apache.org/
This product includes software developed by CollabNet (http://www.Collab.Net/).

Probaly, this has been fixed since, a quick investigation in svn issue tracker revealed no open issues regarding this. I’ll look further into this later, and of course report it appropriately if this is an unknown issue.

But as you see, you can still experience basic issues on the latest and greatest stuff out there. Be wary!

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© 2023 Mikkel Kirkgaard Nielsen, contents CC BY-SA 4.0