Jenkins: invalid version of SVN working copy

Question

Our build server runs Jenkins 1.502 with Subversion plugin upgraded to version 1.45. This plugin uses svnkit-1.7.6-jenkins-1.jar.

Also we have SVN client 1.7.8 installed.

Jenkins successfully checks out source code from SVN repository. But when I go to workspace directory and try to run some svn command manually, it fails:

# cd /var/lib/jenkins/jobs/myproject/workspace/
# svnversion
svn: E155036: Working copy '/var/lib/jenkins/jobs/myproject/workspace' is too old (format 8, created by Subversion 1.4)

The error message indicates that working copy was created by SVN 1.4, but version of svnkit is 1.7.6. How could it be?

I searched entire file system, there are no any other svnkit-*.jar files.

Answer 1

There is an option in jenkins to tell svn which working copy format to use(manage jenkins > configure system), look for a 'Subversion Workspace Version' pulldown - it's likely set to 1.4. change it to the latest version in the list.

Answer 2

I wasn't able to downgrade subversion to 1.7. (due to dependencies).

Another way to fix this is add a "Pre Step / Execute Shell" with command svn upgrade respectively cd trunk; svn upgrade in the job configuration.

This works with subversion 1.8.8 on Ubuntu 14.04.