Subversion – Repository casing issues on Windows!

To my surprise, today when I checked out my Subversion repository – running VisualSVN on a Windows Home Server – it downloaded just as expected. Only when I made some changes, did I realize that something is wrong as I received following error!

“Server sent unexpected return value (403 Forbidden) in response to MKACTIVITY”

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It turns out that even on Windows, Subversion repository url’s are case sensitive. (Strangely that not the case for fetching source!)

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Solution: Create a new folder, and download the repository afresh with right case – as on server. Once downloaded, try making a change and it will all work fine.

Enjoy!

--Sharad

4 Comments

  • thank you very much

    that was very helpful

  • What a stupid bug, wasted an hour of my time!

  • Thanks - I had no clue what the message meant.
    You can use "relocate" instead of re-download

  • We also ran across this recently - for what it is worth and for the greater internet knowledge:

    We had assigned rights to a user on a specific repository only. He could checkout but not commit. Resolution was to assign him rights to the root and then deny him rights to specific repositories down the tree. He needed to have access to the root to checkin. The error indicated this to us since it was /svn/!svn.

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