subversion + three.co.uk = proxy trouble

June 8 2008 : posted under eclipse linux programming

If you try to access a subversion repository over http while using a 3G connection from three.co.uk you may receive an error message like.

svn: PROPFIND request failed on ‘/repos’ svn: Processing PROPFIND request response failed: Premature end of file. (/repos)

This is because three.co.uk uses a proxy to interecept web traffic on their network.

This proxy does not understand all the commands that are used by subversion.

It is perfectly possible to access subversion repositories through a proxy - just not through the one at three.co.uk.

Three only filter traffic on port 80 - the standard web port. Well, at least as far as I can tell that’s all they do.

So if you can set up subversion to access a different proxy - one that does play nice - then you can access your repository over your 3G connection.

Under Linux the subversion proxy settings are in the file:

~/.subversion/servers

Just add settings as below:

[global]
http-proxy-host = www.exaple.com
http-proxy-port = 3128
http-proxy-username = nobody
http-proxy-password = secret