I got an error saying "This client is too old to work with working copy '...'. " How can I fix it without upgrading Subversion?

Upgrade your command-line client to 1.4 or newer.

This happens when Subversion's working-copy format changes incompatibly. The new version of Subclipse upgraded your working copy, so now your command-line program, which is old, cannot read it. This can happen if you try out a later version and then revert. For example, you may have a working copy created with Subversion 1.4.4, but you decide to try out Subversion 1.5.0. Then you attempt to switch back to 1.4.4, but you get the above error. This is because 1.5.0 upgraded your working copy format to support some new features (in this case, changelists, the keep-local flag, and variable-depth directories). Although 1.4.4 doesn't know anything about these new features, it can recognize that the working copy format has been upgraded to something higher than it can handle.

1.5.0 upgraded the working copy for a good reason: it realizes that 1.4.4 does not know about these new features, and that if 1.4.4 were to meddle with the working copy metadata now, important information might be lost, possibly causing corruption .

This automatic upgrade behavior can cause problems, if you just want to try out a new release of Subversion without installing it permanently. For this reason, we distribute a script that can downgrade working copies when doing so is safe:

* http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/tools/client-side/change-svn-wc-format.py

Run the script with the "--help" option to see how to use it. As future versions of Subversion are released, we will try to keep this FAQ entry up-to-date with potential downgrade scenarios and their implications.