Question

I want to install a SVN server on a Windows 7 64 bit machine (just for me).

I used Slik SVN and set up a service with:

sc create svnserver binpath= "C:\Program Files\SlikSvn\bin\svnserve.exe --service -r H:\svn\repository" displayname= "Subversion" depend= Tcpip start= auto

This is listed in the list of services, but can not be started:

C:\Windows\system32>sc create svnserver binpath= "C:\Program Files\SlikSvn\bin\s
vnserve.exe --service -r H:\svn\repository" displayname= "Subversion" depend= Tc
pip start= auto
[SC] CreateService ERFOLG

C:\Windows\system32>net start svnserver
Der Dienst reagiert auf die Kontrollfunktion nicht.

Any idea why this does not work?

Answer 1

You state that you want to install a SVN server just for yourself, i.e. you are going to be the only user of the system. So what’s the purpose of installing a SVN server in this case?

Did you decide to setup svnserve because you consider this as the easiest way to make your repositories accessible for clients? If you did, then you’ve missed the easier way to access your repositories:

• You can use direct repository access (on local disk).
  I.e. you can access a repository with the URL: file:///C:\Repositories\MyProject1 or file:///C:\Repositories\MyProject1\trunk\repo-folder.

• If you need to create a clean repository you may use a command-line:

  svnadmin create C:\Repositories\MyProject1

You don’t need a svnserve or Apache HTTP Server for that.

I can agree that Subversion bundles like VisualSVN Server make it much easier to maintain your repositories and understand why one installs it on a laptop for personal use and even uses HTTPS access locally. However I completely don’t understand why would anyone want to setup a personal svnserve-based SVN server on Windows! There is no real use case for that, IMHO. Better consider a dedicated SVN package or use direct file:// access.