Subversion v1.7 issue on Ubuntu (with Subclipse and JavaHL)

Question

I am using subversion and Eclipse on Ubuntu 10. Since there were complaints in Eclipse when I was using the subversion gotten from sudo apt-get install subversion, which is version 1.6, so:

1. I tried to install version 1.7 on my own, and planned to just use it in command line. But it complained that Unrecognized URL scheme for 'https://....
2. When I tried to use subclipse 1.6.x in Eclipse, it reminded me that I have to upgrade its version to be compatible with subversion 1.7.
3. After I upgraded subclipse to 1.8.x, I noticed there was no supportive JavaHL available for this version.
4. I intended to un-install subversion, but found there was no make uninstall in the source code.
5. I tried to use sudo apt-get install subversion again, but when I typed svn it was always v1.7.

For now, I really want to remove subversion v1.7 from my system, and just stick with v1.6 for a while.

I've checked several Q&A's, such as How to upgrade JavaHL on Ubuntu? and Subclipse and JavaHL installation headache. But it seems they could not solve my problem. Could you anyone help one this? Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

I fixed it but not in the best possible way.

Introduction to the problem: I work with an Ubuntu Desktop 12.04 (amd64). I have several Eclipse installations (v4.1, v4.2, v4.3). Also got several subversion manually installed on user-home directories (v1.6, v1.7, v1.8). I wished to try subversion-v1.8.x and uninstalled subversion-v1.6.x via app Synaptic. But nonetheless this action finishes OK, subversion still persists. Moreover it should be svn-v1.6.x and I was seeing svn-v1.7. So I messed up installing by accident subversion-v1.7.13 as user root into the operating system. This is, I believe, exactly the same problem you are suffering. To this I've not found a clean solution: “make uninstall”.

The workaround is extremely easy:

(1) Compile the source code and install into your home dir. To this I strongly recommend the following article on subversion-v1.8.5. It is the guide I needed to compile and install javahl. It requires some extra steps your might not be aware of. It is also very important to remember using the parameter “--prefix" to target the installation folder.

./configure --prefix=${MY_INSTALL_PREFIX} …

(2) Configure eclipse.ini with an absolute path to the created directory “lib” To my file I added a single line with the property “java.library.path”.

-vmargs
-Djava.library.path=/home/jordi/bin/subversion-v1.8.5/lib
-Dosgi.requiredJavaVersion=1.6

This for me fixed the problem because I ignore the subversion that is installed into the operating system. You should also consider to fix your “.profile” file to rebuild your environment variable $PATH in order to set the “./bin/subversion-v1.8.5/bin” directory before $PATH provided by the operating system.

In essence the solution is overwrite operating system software and use your own version in your home directory. This might apply as well for any Ubuntu and Eclipse versions available.

Answer 2

Question 1. This means you when you ran configure it either did not find Neon (which is the library it uses for http communications) or the Neon it found was not built with SSL support (typically via OpenSSL).

There are pre-built packages for Ubuntu. Why not use one of those?

http://subversion.apache.org/packages.html#ubuntu

Questions 2/3. See - http://subclipse.tigris.org/wiki/JavaHL

Note that when you built Subversion you would need to run make javahl and make install-javahl

Question 4. Can't really help you. Whenever I build something, I use the --prefix= option so that I can control the folder it installs to. You can then just rm the folder.

Question 5. Did you try uninstalling the package first? Maybe Ubuntu just thinks it is installed already. I doubt it would know if you replace the binaries with your own that were built from a different version.