I wrote quite a while ago about installing Subversion on Mac OS X. It was easy and I used the DarwinPort facility. Since I recently got a new machine I had to install Subverson on it and found that things have changed since then (it's even easier). Without having Subversion installed, the SvnX client naturally would not work! In fact, it would hang and require a Force Quit.

Subversion is now released in a native binary package for Mac OS X, so you don't need to go through the DarwinPorts mechanism. I found the .dmg for the 1.3.1 version Universal Binary at Metissian. The install just takes a moment, and svn gets installed at /usr/local/bin/svn.

It's important to adjust the SvnX preferences so that it knows where svn is installed. In my previous DarwinPorts install svn was installed at /opt/local/svn. Go to the SvnX preferences before actually opening a repository or working copy, and update the "Path to svn binaries folder" value, changing it to /usr/local/bin. You may have to quit and re-launch SvnX. If you try to access a repository or working copy with SvnX when it doesn't have the correct svn, SvnX will hang and you'll have to Force Quit it (it seemed to consistently take two Force Quits to terminate it).

With Subversion 1.3.1 installed and SvnX 0.9.9 pointing to it correctly, it all works as expected.