Problem

Environment specific: Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion)

When trying to clone from Subversion to Mercurial, or use a repository via hgsubversion, the following error is displayed:

abort: no compatible bindings available:

Subversion 1.5.0 or later required, but no bindings were found
Subvertpy 0.7.4 or later required, but not found

Please install either Subvertpy or the Subversion Python SWIG bindings!

Cause

Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) and later versions no longer come pre-installed with the Python/Subversion bindings required by hgsubversion.

If on Mac OS X 10.10 (Yosemite), some dependencies for hgsubversion are built using the wrong architecture in order to work on Yosemite, so you must build them yourself.

Resolution

The easiest way to install the bindings is as follows:

1. Install Homebrew from http://brew.sh/

2. Type the following command to install Homebrew's Subversion and Python bindings:

   $ brew install --with-python subversion
   

   This will take a little while

   Yosemite Users

   SourceTree for Mac 2.0.5 contains an updated hgsubversion extension, but you may still have to follow the below steps to get it working.

   If the second step's command doesn't work and you're on Yosemite, see the following links:

   https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/issues/36301
   https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/issues/35744
   https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/issues/34119

   Depending on your environment, you may have to perform some of the commands noted. Typically you have to run 'brew update' first, then 'brew reinstall apr --universal', 'brew reinstall apr-util --universal', and only then 'brew install --with-python subversion'. This should then be followed by step 3 below. Running the previous commands should yield no errors, if it does, see the comments in the linked GitHub issues.

    

3. Add the bindings to your Python setup.

   $ sudo sh -c 'echo /usr/local/lib/svn-python > /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/subversion.pth'

   This makes your Python install look in /usr/local/lib/svn-python for libraries which is where the bindings are

Your hgsubversion clones should now be working again, both in SourceTree and on the command line.

See also: git-svn problems on Mountain Lion