Upgrade Subversion on Mac OS X

If you get the following error

svn: This client is too old to work with working copy '.';
please get a newer Subversion client

... or you just want to update your subversion client (command line), try the following:

1. In Terminal, type "svn --version" to find out what version you currently have
2. Go to http://www.open.collab.net/downloads/community and download the latest client for OS X and install it. This will install the new svn into /opt/subversion/bin
3. Got to your terminal and check your $PATH by typing "echo $PATH". If you don't see /opt/subversion/bin in there, make sure you add it by typing export PATH=/opt/subversion/bin:$PATH. If it DOES exist and appears AFTER /usr/bin, then you may need to remove an older copy of svn that came installed on OS X. To do so, go to /usr/bin and remove all files starting with svn. This isn't an exact science but it should do the trick.

4. To be able to call the Subversion commands from every directory, you must add it to your path in the ".profile" or .bash_profile. If you don't know what that means, don't worry. Just follow the instructions.

   Open the Terminal application. It can be found in the /Applications/Utilities folder. Whenever you see below a line starting with a dollar sign, you should type the text after the dollar sign in your terminal and hit return.

   Start by creating a new text file called '.bash_profile' in "~/" directory, i.e. with the command line text editor pico:

   $ handy .profile

   Add the following line to the .profile file:

   export PATH=/opt/subversion/bin/:$PATH

   Now hit Control-X, then confirm saving the file with 'y', followed by return.

   You have just added Subversions's location to your path. Let Terminal read this file to know the path has changed (there's an empty space between the dots):

   $ . .profile or . ./.profile*
   (Step 4 referent from: http://www.rubyrobot.org/tutorial/subversion-with-mac-os-x)
5. Type "svn --version". You should see that you have the newest version installed!

NOTE: If /opt/subversion/bin already exists, it will be backed up to /opt/subversion_backup.MMDDYYHHMMSSS. See the readme for more information.

*See http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2621/os_x_change_path_environment_variable/ for a great explanation of this

 

Quote from : http://www.redfinsolutions.com/redfin-blog/update-subversion-mac-os-x