Spiga

Using Subversion with Network Drives in OS X

May 04, 08 by Andrew Vayanis

Ever 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.

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6 responses for this post

  1. Gravatar
    MikaP Says:

    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.

  2. Gravatar
    Andrew Vayanis Says:

    Remember, if you get MacFUSE, look for an app called MacFusion as well. It is a UI for MacFUSE.

  3. Gravatar
    Christina Says:

    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! :)

  4. Gravatar
    Scott Pearse Says:

    Has anyone found a way to use AFS with SVN? Would be great to know if you have…

  5. Gravatar
    joachim Says:

    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

  6. Gravatar
    Andrew Vayanis Says:

    @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.

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