SVN certificate trust error with XCode 4.2 or Coda, but not with command-line or svnX

Question

I just got a new Mac (with Lion) and am setting everything up, but I am stuck on this SVN certificate trust error for my repositories on Assembla.

The most common solution seems to be to move to Terminal and perform some svn operation on my working copy there, then respond to permanently trust the certificate when prompted.

Here is where I am stuck. With the Terminal, I never get a certificate trust prompt! I can happily list, commit, check out a new copy, anything, no problem. With svnX, again, no problem . Neither way am I ever prompted to trust the certificate.

But, with XCode 4.2 or Coda, I get stuck on the certificate trust error. I've tried removing anything in the keychain related to svn or assembla, doesn't help. I've tried browing to my repository in Safari, and again I can log in and am never given a certificate prompt.

I am utterly baffled. If anyone has any ideas, please help! Thanks!

Coda gives me this: svn: OPTIONS of 'https://subversion.assembla.com/svn/my/repo/path': Server certificate verification failed: issuer is not trusted (https://subversion.assembla.com)

And XCode gives me this:

Error validating server certificate for 'https://subversion.assembla.com:443':
 - The certificate is not issued by a trusted authority. Use the
   fingerprint to validate the certificate manually!
Certificate information:
 - Hostname: *.assembla.com
 - Valid: from Thu, 24 Mar 2011 19:30:40 GMT until Sun, 24 Mar 2013 19:30:40 GMT
 - Issuer: 07969287, http://certificates.godaddy.com/repository, GoDaddy.com, Inc., Scottsdale, Arizona, US
 - Fingerprint: ae:b0:b6:94:14:5f:4b:28:d2:82:68:ae:e9:18:85:b3:ea:36:ee:f2
(R)eject, accept (t)emporarily or accept (p)ermanently? 
svn: OPTIONS of 'https://[email protected]/svn/my/repo/path': Server
 certificate verification failed: issuer is not trusted (https://subversion.assembla.com)

Outride

Some things I have tried: - I have searched for anything matching "svn" or "sub" or "assembla" in Keychain Access and deleted them. Only affects saving the login password. - I have tried deleting the ~/.subversion directory to try and remove any cached trust settings for the command-line client, so it would now ask me to manually trust it. - I have tried deleting all cache files on the Mac and all pref files related to XCode. The one thing XCode still remembers - all my now useless repositories. - I have tried a complete uninstall (mode all), restart and fresh install of XCode. – Outride

Answer 1

You need to make sure you use the svn binary in the Developer Tools package. If you go to the directory under version control and type

/Developer/usr/bin/svn up

You should be prompted to accept the cert, press p to accept permanently and then xcode should work.

On newer versions of XCode 4 which come as an appbundle, try this instead:

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/svn up

If the Xcode appbundle is elsewhere, just edit the path accordingly.

Halmahera

You rock! I had no idea there were multiple svn binaries floating around on my computer. Now it finally makes sense that different programs ended up with different trust settings. Apple tech dev support couldn't come up with this answer. While I had done crazy workaround for my imac to be fixed, I just upgraded my laptop to Lion and used your tip to immediately fix the problem there. Thanks! – Outride

No problem. I'm glad I could help. The same problem had me pondering my sanity for a while. – Halmahera

Woah. I can actually use Xcode's source control features now. I never thought I'd see the day. – Emunctory

Answer 2

Ok, I finally stumbled into a fix, out of desperation as I as exploring moving to Git and moving to Bitbucket from Assembla.

I installed MacPorts and did the git-svn install (sudo port install git-core +svn). Once it was done (installing a lot more files than I expected, and taking a lot longer), I tried an initial clone of my svn repository into Git (as in: git svn clone myrepourl -T trunk -b branches -t tags).

At long last, I was faced with the beautiful prompt asking me to accept Assembla's certificate, and one "p" later, Coda and XCode are now happily connected to subversion again. Now I can move to Git at my leisure instead of in a panic.

Outride