Possible to force SVN to consider a directory a working copy?

Question

I'm trying to resolve this puzzle and I'm starting to think the problem isn't that SVN clients can't resolve the path to the repository, it's that the repository isn't a working copy.

Summary of original problem: I'm migrating from an old Bitnami Trac Stack on an Ubuntu VM to a current native Windows Bitnami Trac Stack on the same server . I used backups made with hotcopy from the Ubuntu SVN repositories so theoretically they're "indistinguishable" from the those.

However, I am unable to view the new SVN repositories in an external client like TortoiseSVN, but I can view the repositories in Trac. Any command that I run at the command line tells me that the repository I'm trying to work with "is not a working copy".

If I point TortoiseSVN at //sbeut01:8001/svn/RnD (which theoretically is a valid repository) it errors gracefully with: //sbeut01:8001/svn/RnD is not a working copy

How can I make the repositories on the Windows Trac/subversion instance working copies? Or does that appear to be the actual problem as opposed to my original question referred to above?

SO Question that didn't resolve the problem

Edit: I thought I'd try to just make a brand new repository using the Windows Trac/subversion instance, and then see if I could see that instance from a remote svn client or even the local copy. However, if I try to do a svn mkdir c:\\test , I get the same error, c:\\test is not a working copy . I'm not sure what to make of that. I also tried to do the same with svnadmin create c:\\test , with the same results.

2nd Edit It turned out that there actually was a working copy, I was just looking in the wrong place for it. The eventual right answer was:

svn://[IP address]:3691/Bitnami/Repos/RnD

8001 was the Apache port that Trac uses to view a web enabled version of the repository, 3691 is the SVN port from when I first set up the Windows Bitnami Trac Stack

Answer 1

I think I see what's going on, and it appears that everything is working fine and there's just a little misunderstanding on your end.

Using Tortoise, open a Repository Browser and enter in your repository location, but keep the http protocol identifier on it, ie http://sbeut01:8001/svn/RnD . Assuming everything is set up correctly, which it sounds to me like it is since you say Trac can see it there, you'll see your repository as you'd expect.

The problem you were running into it just a misunderstanding of how Tortoise and SVN in general work, I believe. Tortoise can communicate with both the repository (on the server) and the working copy (on the client). It's not immediately obvious all the time which Tortoise operation is communicating with which, and without experience or the knowledge that "working copy" and "repository" are very precise terms , I can (and do) see where confusion can come from.