What if SVN repository is too recent for Subversion client which is itself "up to date"?

Question

Something unexpected is happening... I have upgraded some SVN repositories lately. Now when I'm on Ubuntu, I get the following when I try updating them:

max@ASUSN73S:~/d/some/repos$ svn up
svn: The path '.' appears to be part of a Subversion 1.7 or greater
working copy.  Please upgrade your Subversion client to use this
working copy.

So, yup, I had to update Tortoise on Windows because of that, so I updated Tortoise and it worked. No I try updating Subversion on Ubuntu to bring it up to speed, but here's what I get:

max@ASUSN73S:~/d/some/repos$ sudo apt-get install subversion
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
subversion is already the newest version.
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libatk1.0-0:i386 libxcomposite1:i386 nspluginwrapper libnspr4-0d:i386 libcairo2:i386 libdatrie1:i386 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0:i386 libpixman-1-0:i386 libxinerama1:i386 nspluginviewer:i386 libxft2:i386 libthai0:i386 libjasper1:i386
  libpango1.0-0:i386 libxcb-render0:i386 libxcursor1:i386 libxcb-shm0:i386 libxrandr2:i386 libnss3-1d:i386 libgtk2.0-0:i386
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 2 not upgraded.

subversion already up to date? Nope!:

max@ASUSN73S:~/d/some/repos$ svn --version --quiet
1.6.12

I already ran an apt-get update command.

I don't remember having changed the sources.list file on this installation, but I might be wrong. In case it would be relevant, here it is:

# deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 11.10 _Oneiric Ocelot_ - Release amd64 (20111012)]/ dists/oneiric/main/binary-i386/

# deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 11.10 _Oneiric Ocelot_ - Release amd64 (20111012)]/ oneiric main restricted

# See http://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes for how to upgrade to
# newer versions of the distribution.
deb http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric main restricted
deb-src http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric main restricted

## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the
## distribution.
deb http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates main restricted
deb-src http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates main restricted

## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu
## team. Also, please note that software in universe WILL NOT receive any
## review or updates from the Ubuntu security team.
deb http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric universe
deb-src http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric universe
deb http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates universe
deb-src http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates universe

## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu 
## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to 
## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in 
## multiverse WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu
## security team.
deb http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric multiverse
deb-src http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric multiverse
deb http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates multiverse
deb-src http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates multiverse

## N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as
## extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes
## newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features.
## Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review
## or updates from the Ubuntu security team.
deb http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-backports main restricted universe multiverse

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-security main restricted
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-security main restricted
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-security universe
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-security universe
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-security multiverse
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-security multiverse

## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from Canonical's
## 'partner' repository.
## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by Canonical and the
## respective vendors as a service to Ubuntu users.
# deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu oneiric partner
# deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu oneiric partner

## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by third-party
## developers who want to ship their latest software.
deb http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric main
deb-src http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric main

Version:

max@ASUSN73S:/etc/apt$ cat /proc/version
Linux version 3.0.0-22-generic (buildd@komainu) (gcc version 4.6.1 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.6.1-9ubuntu3) ) #36-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jun 12 17:37:42 UTC 2012

Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:23

1

The Ubuntu repositories don't always have the most recent versions of any software. Someone needs to test new versions to work out any problems that come up with dependencies, etc. So a given version of Ubuntu will have a certain version of an app, and a newer version of Ubuntu might have a newer version of the app.

If you really need a newer version that what's available, you can sometimes simply add a repository that has the newer version, if it's available. There is a topic here from an old askUbuntu question that may help you do this.

When you can't find it in a repository, you sometimes can either download a .deb file to install it yourself, or even compile the source.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:23

Community

1

answered Jul 10 '12 at 16:57

Marty Fried

18,466

OK! I followed the instructions from the other thread you suggested. (Though we only need to do the add-repository/update/install sequence; no need to dist-upgrade and all of that.) I'm just very surprised a package with such popularity as subversion doesn't have higher priority for package updating. Thanks! – Joanis Jul 10 '12 at 17:36
@M.Joanis - I'm not a subversion user, but perhaps it's not quite as popular as you might think, so the priority isn't as high as you think it should be. This is probably a terrible statistic, but searching for "subversion" in Google gets 34 million hits, where searching for "git" gets over 200 million. – Marty Fried Jul 10 '12 at 18:10
Git has got A LOT of attention lately. I admit it's a wonderful piece of software, and the DVCS paradigm is very interesting, but Subversion is probably still used by much more professional developers than Git. On LinkedIn, you find 47k ppl knowing Git, and 124k ppl knowing SVN, even though Git has a much better growth rate, it's still not as important. Links: http://www.linkedin.com/skills/skill/Git?trk=skills-ext-prof vs http://www.linkedin.com/skills/skill/SVN?trk=skills-ext-prof Anyway, my point is: after the Git hype, SVN is still huge and probably has much more users. – Joanis Jul 10 '12 at 21:27
Ngram: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=subversion%2Cgit%2Ccvs%2Cmercurial&year_start=2000&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=1 – Joanis Jul 10 '12 at 21:28
Ubuntu's popularity contest (by installations): http://popcon.ubuntu.com/by_inst you can search for "subversion" ("cvs" is close by), and for "git ". – Joanis Jul 10 '12 at 21:33
OK, I don't really mean to belittle any of them, and my comments weren't really very well thought out. I can imagine that there is a lot of inertia in mainstream companies. But then, those companies probably don't upgrade to the newest version very quickly, either. – Marty Fried Jul 11 '12 at 01:03

What if SVN repository is too recent for Subversion client which is itself "up to date"?

1 Answers1