How to use svn+ssh with Tortoise SVN from the command line

Question

I'm having trouble trying to checkout a repo using the following syntax on a Windows 7 workstation with TortoiseSvn:

svn co svn+ssh://user@ip/repo .

What I've done to test this issue:

• Modified the network settings of TortoiseSvn to point to ..\TortoisePlink.exe
• Successfully established an ssh connection to the target machine with no issues
• Successfully checked out repos from workstations running Ubuntu with OpenSsh

When I try to do the above syntax from the command line on the Windows 7 workstation I get the error:

svn: E720087: Unable to connect to a repository at URL 'svn+ssh:///user@ip/repo'
svn: E720087: Can't create tunnel:The parameter is incorrect.

Interestingly, if I use the tortoise gui to browse to the repo I can successfully open and check out the repo. But I need to do it from the command line for scripting purposes.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

For svn+ssh to work with Tortoise, make sure %SVN_SSH% is set to your ssh client (probably plink.exe from Tortoise or Putty) and the path must be written either with forward slashes / or with escaped backslashes \\.

Try to set %SVN_SSH% with the absolute path of plink while escaping the backslashes, something like C:\\Program Files\\TortoiseSVN\\bin\\TortoisePlink.exe instead of ..\TortoisePlink.exe

Answer 2

• Connect to server, using Plink, by hand. Define needed and correct (for you) startup-options of plink
• Add this line (use tortoiseplink as windowless-plink) into %APPDATA%config file, [tunnels] section