Minor Description
Aboslute paths are currently not supported in Windows for password-db and authz-db, in svnserve.conf. This issue has been tested with the svn:// protocol, svnserve running as a Windows service: svnserve --service -r C:\svn\repos Tools version: version 1.4.6 (r28521) compiled Dec 20 2007, 16:19:22 Procedure to reproduce the issue: 1) Create a new repository "test": svnadmin create C:\svn\repos\test 2) Use the following lines in C:\svn\repos\test\conf\svnserve.conf: password-db = C:\svn\etc\conf\passwd authz-db = C:\svn\etc\conf\authz where the two files C:\svn\etc\conf\passwd and C:\svn\etc\conf\authz exist and contain a valid configuration. For example the user "user" has write access to [/]. 3) Create a new directory: svn mkdir svn://localhost/test/trunk -m "Initial directories" --username user will result in the following error message instead of creating the directory: svn: Can't open file 'C:\svn\repos\test\conf\C:\svn\etc\conf\passwd' : The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect. While a messy work-around exists, this issue should be attended to have support absolute paths properly in the Windows environment.
Original issue reported by scythal