How can I use TortoiseSVN on windows 7?

Question

I am trying to setup an SVN for the first time, I chose tortoiseSVN because my IDE phpdesigner has built in support for tortoisesvn.

SO far I have installed the program, installed it and tried to set it up following many tutorials and reading the help file I still get this error no matter what I try to do, I even searched SO and google for this same error and I found many results, I was unsuccessful in finding a solution though, does anyone have any ideas, this is very frustraing, maybe I was meant to never use SVN

Import C:\webserver\htdocs\cache to file:///C:/webserver/SVMRepository
Error : Unable to open an ra_local session to URL
Error : Unable to open repository 'file:///C:/webserver/SVMRepository'

I have tried things like this in the browser svn://C:/webserver/SVMRepository and all it does is open up the tortouse repository browser and then says "Unknown hostname C"

Answer 1

-- edit: Advice only good if your SVN server is on another machine

That url is not your repository.

Your repo is something like:

http://webserver/project

You can actually just browse directly to it, depending on how it's configured (but if it's configured with apache, this should be possible).

Who set up your svn server? You?

Answer 2

TortoiseSVN works perfectly fine for me on Windows 7, didn't have to do anything to make it work - just installed out of the box and been running fine ever since.

Chances are there is actually something up with your SVN repo. Try entering c:\webserver\SVMRepository instead (if the repo is actually on your local machine).

Otherwise, I would suggest using a simplified SVN server like VisualSVN for Windows, which does make life a lot easier, even for experienced developers.

Answer 3

A couple of questions:

• Is there actually a repository in C:\Webserver\SVMRepository? (can you verify that the directory contains subdirectories like conf, db, hooks, locks?)
• Which command are you trying to execute in TortoiseSVN?

Also, note, I use TortoiseSVN on Windows 7, and it works exactly like expected.

Note that I get exactly the type of error message when I try to use a repository directory that doesn't contain a repository.

Ie. I simply created C:\Temp\svn, did nothing to it, then tried to import another directory using file:///c:/temp/svn as the repository url, and got this:

Import C:\Temp\dddd to file:///c:/temp/svn
Unable to open an ra_local session to URL
Unable to open repository 'file:///C:/temp/svn'

Answer 4

How are you importing the Repo? using the GUI or command line.

Can you try from command line?

$svn import ./sourcetree file:///C:/webserver/SVMRepository -m "initial import"

Answer 5

I have to mention this: is it possibly that you are typing SVMRepository when you really mean to type SVNRepository? I only suggest this because it is there in two places in your question (and I have myself wasted hours on problems caused by my own typos).

Answer 6

Since you're using ra_local, my guess would be a permissions issue.

Did you create the repository with the same user that is now accessing it?

Also, any chance it's just a simple typo in the URL: SV**M**Repository

Answer 7

Could it maybe be a simple typo on your part?

file:///C:/webserver/SVMRepository

seems wrong, I'd suspect you meant

file:///C:/webserver/SVNRepository

? (the SV**N** instead of SV**M**).