Custom Software Development

SCPlugin for OSX may return “authorization failed” when you try to update or commit the first time you use it. The reason for this is that it uses the keychain however it doesn’t seem to pop-up the Allow/Deny dialog in order for you to allow it to access the keychain.

The solution is that you need to do at least one initial checkout using the command line in order to give SVN access to the keychain.  To do this, just open terminal and navigate to an empty folder.  Do a checkout of your project with the command “svn co http://myrepolocation.com/ –username myusername –password mypassword .”

when you do this, you’ll get the OSX Allow/Deny dialog and you should Allow SVN access to the keychain.  From this point on SCPlugin will be able to correctly remember your authentication information.

If you’re a *NIX guy/gal you might be tempted to bash Windows for not having symolic links. Windows has actually supported a similar feature called Junctions since Windows 2000. The easiest way to manage junctions is with a freeware explorer add-on called NTFS Link. Windows Vista supports several types of links including symbolic links. You can create them with a simple DOS command, however there is one trick – you must create the link as administrator. If you do not run the command as Administrator, you will get an error “You do not have sufficient privilege to perform this operation”

To create a symbolic link in Vista:

Go to Start Menu -> Accessories -> Command Prompt and RIGHT-click the icon. Select “Run as administrator” from the dialog menu. This will open a command prompt window that is running with full administrator permissions. In this window, use the following command to create a symbolic link:

mklink /d c:\mylink c:\sourcefolder

(The /d switch is used for directories. If you are linking a single file, you don’t need the /d.)

To delete links, simply use Windows Explorer. Interestingly you don’t need to run Explorer as administrator, just delete ‘em as you would any file or folder.