Using Subversion with Network Drives in OS X
May 04, 08 by Andrew VayanisEver try to get subversion working between multiple Macs over a home network without WEB Dav or public key authentication over ssh? Well, that was what I was trying to accomplish over this weekend and it apparently isn’t as straightforward as I thought. There seems to be an issue with subversion (SVN) and apple’s AFP protocol, something to do with not being able to obtain exclusive locks? Well, that is all I could find on the problem. So, if anyone knows how to fix this, I would like to know. However, I did find another solution on my own, that was just as useful to me as using an AFP mounted drive, but much more versatile. Intoducing… MacFUSE!
MacFUSE implements a mechanism that makes it possible to implement a fully functional file system in a user-space program on Mac OS X (10.4 and above).
In a nutshell, MacFUSE lets you turn any number of connection interfaces into a fully functional file system. With the files provided in the link above, you can mount an FTP or SSH login as a network drive, thus solving my issue of using subversion over a network drive. The best part is, I can now easily access my Mac Pro remotely as well. Although, now that I think about it, I have never tried to mount a remote drive over AFP so that could have always been possible.
I have to admit this is my new favorite development tool since it makes working remotely much more pleasant. Instead of opening files one at a time through Cyberduck, my FTP client, and Textmate, I can now mount my FTP account as a network drive and create projects with Textmate to edit all my files. This also happens to be a great solution for all the people wishing for FTP support within Textmate.
Anyhow, I hope this can be of help to someone else.
MikaP Says: 05.27.08 at 1:48 am
Thanks for this! I was fighting with the svn+network drive combo for the whole yesterday evening without getting any results (except svn errors on commit). Have to try MacFUSE if it would solve my problems.
Andrew Vayanis Says: 05.27.08 at 11:23 am
Remember, if you get MacFUSE, look for an app called MacFusion as well. It is a UI for MacFUSE.
Christina Says: 06.18.08 at 3:24 pm
Hi Andrew! It’s Christina. This comment obviously has nothing to do with your post. Partially because I only understood half of what you said. Anyways, I found your blog through Dave’s, and just wanted to say hi. Hope you guys are doing well!
Scott Pearse Says: 07.03.08 at 10:03 am
Has anyone found a way to use AFS with SVN? Would be great to know if you have…
joachim Says: 08.27.09 at 1:32 pm
Can you please explain how you setup svn over your mounted ftp share?
I could create a repository by svnadmin create /Volume/ftpmount/svn.
But importing a project causes the following message:
svn: Can’t open file ‘/Volumes/ftpmount/svn/format’: Permission denied
Andrew Vayanis Says: 09.10.09 at 12:43 am
@JOACHIM not sure if you are still trying to accomplish this, but I didn’t actually try with an FTP volume. I was actually using SSH. I am not sure if that would solve your problems, but it worked for me. Let me know if you are having problems, and I will try to go through my previous steps to see if there was anything else I needed to do.