Setting up Subversion to Mecurial conversion on Mac OS X 10.4.11 take 2

My first attempt at this was the hard way. The easier way is to use MacPorts:

$sudo port install subversion subversion-python24bindings

Unfortunately though, I still get the same errors as in my first attempt, when trying to convert the same Subversion repositories.

Setting up Subversion to Mecurial conversion on Mac OS X 10.4.11

If I am to switch over to Mercurial, I need to be able to import my existing projects that are in Subversion. Mercurial includes a Convert extension for this purpose, so I thought I would try and get it going on my Mac.

[EDIT: This is the hard way. See this post, for the easy way.]

I already had Subversion 1.4.3 installed (compiled from source), but didn't have the Python bindings installed, so I used this article and the instructions in the file  subversion/bindings/swig/INSTALL, located in the Subversion source.

I thought I should build against the same version of Python as Mercurial was using. As I had installed Mercurial from MacPorts, Python 2.4 was located under /opt/local/.  This meant my configure statements were as follows.

swig:
$./configure --with-python=/opt/local/bin/python2.4

Subversion:
$./configure --prefix=/usr/local --with-openssl --with-ssl --with-zlib --enable-swig-bindings=python PYTHON=/opt/local/bin/python2.4

The bindings need to be in the python path, so I also created the file:
/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.4/lib/python2.4/site-packages/subversion.pth

with the contents:
$ cat subversion.pth
/usr/local/lib/svn-python

To confirm the bindings are installed correctly, the following command should execute with no output:
$/opt/local/bin/python2.4 -c "from svn import client"

I am not particularly happy with this installation. Compiling source that depends on a port makes me feel uncomfortable. Perhaps it is because I am unfamiliar with MacPorts or just the fact that I have to remember that this dependency exists and not to do anything that may affect it. I also installed swig 1.3.33 (the latest), however the Subversion docs only refer up to version 1.3.29.

So far I have been unable to successfully complete a conversion of a Subversion repository. Trying the example from the Mercurial docs starts working, but after a little while fails:
$ hg convert http://code.sixapart.com/svn/memcached
assuming destination memcached-hg
initializing destination memcached-hg repository
scanning source...
sorting...
converting...
710 Fix for flush_all 1-second window bug. You can now do a "set" immediately
...
698 cleanup, cleanup, cleanup, cleanup.
** unknown exception encountered, details follow
** report bug details to http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/bts
** or mercurial@selenic.com
** Mercurial Distributed SCM (version 0.9.5)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/opt/local/bin/hg", line 14, in ?
mercurial.dispatch.run()
...
File "/usr/local/lib/svn-python/libsvn/ra.py", line 511, in svn_ra_check_path
return apply(_ra.svn_ra_check_path, args)
libsvn._core.SubversionException: ("PROPFIND request failed on '/branches/client-xs-20070328/Cache-Memcached-GetParserXS/const-c.inc'", 175002)

Also tried converting one of the work Subversion repositories. It starts working, but after a little while fails with a different error:
** unknown exception encountered, details follow
** report bug details to http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/bts
** or mercurial@selenic.com
** Mercurial Distributed SCM (version 0.9.5)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/opt/local/bin/hg", line 14, in ?
mercurial.dispatch.run()
...
File "/opt/local/lib/python2.4/site-packages/hgext/convert/__init__.py", line 267, in convert
if "\n" in desc:
TypeError: iterable argument required

Haven't tried converting a local Subversion repository yet.

Installing Mercurial on Tiger

Thought I would jot down my experiences installing Mercurial on a Mac running Tiger. Mac’s are great for some things, but they can be a bit of a pain when it comes to installing unix open source software.

The first thing I tried was installing the latest binary package from the Mercurial site. It is dependent on python, so first I installed MacPython 2.5 by following the link on the Mercurial Page. Then I tried installing the Mercurial binary package, but it complained because it couldn’t find Apple Python. Tried rebooting, didn’t work, go figure.

The second thing I tried was building from source. This is my preferred way of installing this kind of software, because you can explicitly manage the versions yourself. However the build failed because I didn’t have the documentation tools installed (these can be installed via MacPorts). Also, I didn’t seem to have my python path set up properly, because the built hg executable barfed with an error.

The third way I tried was installing via MacPorts. This worked very easily, once MacPorts was installed. The current version of MacPorts required a newer version of Xcode tools than what was already installed. So it was off to the apple developer site (I already had a login) to download the latest version, which is about 1GB.

IMHO, to have to sign up to an Apple site to get the current C compiler so you can build open source software is really poor form from Apple.

Why?

Well I am finally starting a blog.

I guess I am doing it now because I am currently evaluating distributed version control systems and wish to record my thoughts and experiences somewhere for future reference and the off chance that they may be useful for someone else.