exec() function doesn't rule svn checkout

Question

Hi,

I'm writing some functions in php using exec() to interrogate a svn.

The commands exec("svn list ".$myurl) works.

Now, I try to get a path on a svn repository with the checkout command. When I put the command "svn checkout http://core.wordress.org/tags/2.9.2/ last-version" directly in the console, it works.

But when I do this from a php script using exec(), like this :

exec("svn checkout ".$myurl, $dir)

it doesn't work.

Have you an idea ??

Answer 1

This can have a variety of reasons.

• The user PHP runs under is not allowed to write into the directory you want to check out into

• The SVN repository requires login credentials that are not cached for the user PHP runs under

• The SVN checkout process starts, but requires some additional input like the dreaded "Do you want to accept this certificate" with unsigned certificates.

Try adding 2>&1 to the command to redirect stderr to stdout, and take a look at $dir. Also make use of the $return_var parameter to exec().

And as Jacob pointed out, always use escapeshellargs() for your command arguments.