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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /><title>Client Interoperability</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css" type="text/css" /><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.73.2" /><link rel="start" href="index.html" title="Version Control with Subversion" /><link rel="up" href="svn.webdav.html" title="Appendix C. WebDAV and Autoversioning" /><link rel="prev" href="svn.webdav.autoversioning.html" title="Autoversioning" /><link rel="next" href="svn.3rdparty.html" title="Appendix D. Third Party Tools" /></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">Client Interoperability</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="svn.webdav.autoversioning.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">Appendix C. WebDAV and Autoversioning</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="svn.3rdparty.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr /></div><div class="sect1" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a id="svn.webdav.clients"></a>Client Interoperability</h2></div></div></div><p>All WebDAV clients fall into one of three
categories—standalone applications, file-explorer
extensions, or filesystem implementations. These categories
broadly define the types of WebDAV functionality available to
users. <a class="xref" href="svn.webdav.clients.html#svn.webdav.clients.tbl-1" title="Table C.1. Common WebDAV Clients">Table C.1, “Common WebDAV Clients”</a> gives our
categorization and a quick description of some common pieces of
WebDAV-enabled software. More details about these software
offerings, as well as their general category, can be found in
the sections that follow.</p><div class="table"><a id="svn.webdav.clients.tbl-1"></a><p class="title"><b>Table C.1. Common WebDAV Clients</b></p><div class="table-contents"><table summary="Common WebDAV Clients" border="1"><colgroup><col /><col /><col /><col /><col /><col /></colgroup><thead><tr><th>Software</th><th>Type</th><th>Windows</th><th>Mac</th><th>Linux</th><th>Description</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Adobe Photoshop</td><td>Standalone WebDAV application</td><td>X</td><td> </td><td> </td><td>Image editing software, allowing direct opening
from, and writing to, WebDAV URLs</td></tr><tr><td>Cadaver</td><td>Standalone WebDAV application</td><td> </td><td>X</td><td>X</td><td>Command-line WebDAV client supporting file
transfer, tree, and locking operations</td></tr><tr><td>DAV Explorer</td><td>Standalone WebDAV application</td><td>X</td><td>X</td><td>X</td><td>Java GUI tool for exploring WebDAV shares</td></tr><tr><td>Macromedia Dreamweaver</td><td>Standalone WebDAV application</td><td>X</td><td> </td><td> </td><td>Web production software able to directly read from
and write to WebDAV URLs</td></tr><tr><td>Microsoft Office</td><td>Standalone WebDAV application</td><td>X</td><td> </td><td> </td><td>Office productivity suite with several components
able to directly read from and write to WebDAV
URLs</td></tr><tr><td>Microsoft Web Folders</td><td>File-explorer WebDAV extension</td><td>X</td><td> </td><td> </td><td>GUI file explorer program able to perform tree
operations on a WebDAV share</td></tr><tr><td>GNOME Nautilus</td><td>File-explorer WebDAV extension</td><td> </td><td> </td><td>X</td><td>GUI file explorer able to perform tree
operations on a WebDAV share</td></tr><tr><td>KDE Konqueror</td><td>File-explorer WebDAV extension</td><td> </td><td> </td><td>X</td><td>GUI file explorer able to perform tree
operations on a WebDAV share</td></tr><tr><td>Mac OS X</td><td>WebDAV filesystem implementation</td><td> </td><td>X</td><td> </td><td>Operating system has built-in support for mounting
WebDAV shares.</td></tr><tr><td>Novell NetDrive</td><td>WebDAV filesystem implementation</td><td>X</td><td> </td><td> </td><td>Drive-mapping program for assigning Windows drive
letters to a mounted remote WebDAV share</td></tr><tr><td>SRT WebDrive</td><td>WebDAV filesystem implementation</td><td>X</td><td> </td><td> </td><td>File transfer software which, among other things,
allows the assignment of Windows drive letters to a
mounted remote WebDAV share</td></tr><tr><td>davfs2</td><td>WebDAV filesystem implementation</td><td> </td><td> </td><td>X</td><td>Linux file system driver that allows you to mount a
WebDAV share</td></tr></tbody></table></div></div><br class="table-break" /><div class="sect2" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a id="svn.webdav.clients.standalone"></a>Standalone WebDAV applications</h3></div></div></div><p>A WebDAV application is a program which speakes WebDAV
protocols with a WebDAV server. We'll cover some of the most
popular programs with this kind of WebDAV support.</p><div class="sect3" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h4 class="title"><a id="svn.webdav.clients.standalone.windows"></a>Microsoft Office, Dreamweaver, Photoshop</h4></div></div></div><p>On Windows, there are several well-known applications
that contain integrated WebDAV client functionality, such as
Microsoft's Office,
<sup>[<a id="id450584" href="#ftn.id450584" class="footnote">63</a>]</sup>
Adobe's Photoshop, and Macromedia's Dreamweaver programs.
They're able to directly open and save to URLs, and tend to
make heavy use of WebDAV locks when editing a file.</p><p>Note that while many of these programs also exist for
the Mac OS X, they do not appear to support WebDAV directly
on that platform. In fact, on Mac OS X, the
<span class="guimenu">File->Open</span> dialog box doesn't allow
one to type a path or URL at all. It's likely that the
WebDAV features were deliberately left out of Macintosh
versions of these programs, since OS X already provides such
excellent low-level filesystem support for WebDAV.</p></div><div class="sect3" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h4 class="title"><a id="svn.webdav.clients.standalone.free"></a>Cadaver, DAV Explorer</h4></div></div></div><p>Cadaver is a bare-bones Unix commandline program for
browsing and changing WebDAV shares. Like the Subversion
client, it uses the neon HTTP library—not
surprisingly, since both neon and cadaver are written by the
same author. Cadaver is free software (GPL license) and is
available at
<a class="ulink" href="http://www.webdav.org/cadaver/" target="_top">http://www.webdav.org/cadaver/</a>.</p><p>Using cadaver is similar to using a commandline FTP
program, and thus it's extremely useful for basic WebDAV
debugging. It can be used to upload or download files in a
pinch, and also to examine properties, and to copy, move,
lock or unlock files:</p><pre class="screen">
$ cadaver http://host/repos
dav:/repos/> ls
Listing collection `/repos/': succeeded.
Coll: > foobar 0 May 10 16:19
> playwright.el 2864 May 4 16:18
> proofbypoem.txt 1461 May 5 15:09
> westcoast.jpg 66737 May 5 15:09
dav:/repos/> put README
Uploading README to `/repos/README':
Progress: [=============================>] 100.0% of 357 bytes succeeded.
dav:/repos/> get proofbypoem.txt
Downloading `/repos/proofbypoem.txt' to proofbypoem.txt:
Progress: [=============================>] 100.0% of 1461 bytes succeeded.
</pre><p>DAV Explorer is another standalone WebDAV client, written
in Java. It's under a free Apache-like license and is
available at <a class="ulink" href="http://www.ics.uci.edu/~webdav/" target="_top">http://www.ics.uci.edu/~webdav/</a>.
DAV Explorer does everything cadaver does, but has the
advantages of being portable and being a more user-friendly GUI
application. It's also one of the first clients to support
the new WebDAV Access Control Protocol (RFC 3744).</p><p>Of course, DAV Explorer's ACL support is useless in this
case, since <span class="command"><strong>mod_dav_svn</strong></span> doesn't support
it. The fact that both Cadaver and DAV Explorer support
some limited DeltaV commands isn't particularly useful
either, since they don't allow <code class="literal">MKACTIVITY</code>
requests. But it's not relevant anyway; we're assuming all
of these clients are operating against an autoversioning
repository.</p></div></div><div class="sect2" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a id="svn.webdav.clients.file-explorer-extensions"></a>File-explorer WebDAV extensions</h3></div></div></div><p>Some popular file explorer GUI programs support WebDAV
extensions which allow a user to browse a DAV share as if it
was just another directory on the local computer, and to
perform basic tree editing operations on the items in that
share. For example, Windows Explorer is able to browse a
WebDAV server as a “<span class="quote">network place</span>”. Users can
drag files to and from the desktop, or can rename, copy, or
delete files in the usual way. But because it's only a
feature of the file-explorer, the DAV share isn't visible to
ordinary applications. All DAV interaction must happen
through the explorer interface.</p><div class="sect3" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h4 class="title"><a id="svn.webdav.clients.file-explorer-extensions.windows"></a>Microsoft Web Folders</h4></div></div></div><p>Microsoft was one of the original backers of the WebDAV
specification, and first started shipping a client in Windows
98, known as “<span class="quote">Web Folders</span>”. This client was also
shipped in Windows NT4 and 2000.</p><p>The original Web Folders client was an extension to
Explorer, the main GUI program used to browse filesystems. It
works well enough. In Windows 98, the feature might need to
be explicitly installed if Web Folders aren't already visible
inside “<span class="quote">My Computer</span>”. In Windows 2000, simply
add a new “<span class="quote">network place</span>”, enter the URL, and the
WebDAV share will pop up for browsing.</p><p>With the release of Windows XP, Microsoft started shipping
a new implementation of Web Folders, known as the “<span class="quote">WebDAV
mini-redirector</span>”. The new implementation is a
filesystem-level client, allowing WebDAV shares to be mounted
as drive letters. Unfortunately, this implementation is
incredibly buggy. The client usually tries to convert http
URLs (<code class="literal">http://host/repos</code>) into UNC share
notation (<code class="literal">\\host\repos</code>); it also often
tries to use Windows Domain authentication to respond to
basic-auth HTTP challenges, sending usernames as
<code class="literal">HOST\username</code>. These interoperability
problems are severe and documented in numerous places around
the web, to the frustration of many users. Even Greg Stein,
the original author of Apache's WebDAV module, bluntly
states XP Web Folders simply can't operate against an Apache
server.</p><p>Windows Vista's implementation of Web Folders seems to
be almost the same as XP's, and so it has the same sort of
problems (at the time of writing).</p><p>However, there seem to be workarounds for both XP and
Vista that allow Web Folders to work against Apache. Users
have mostly reported success with these techniques, so we'll
relay them here.</p><p>On Windows XP, you have two options. First, search
Microsoft's website for patch KB90730, “<span class="quote">Software
Update for Web Folders</span>”. This may fix all your
problems. If it doesn't, it seems that the original pre-XP
Web Folders implementation is still buried within the
system. You can unearth it by going to “<span class="quote">Network
Places</span>” and add a new network place. When prompted,
enter the URL of the repository, but <span class="emphasis"><em>include a
port number</em></span> in the URL. For
example, <code class="literal">http://host/repos</code> would be
entered as <code class="literal">http://host:80/repos</code> instead.
Respond to any authentication prompts with your Subversion
credentials.</p><p>On Windows Vista, the same patch KB90730 may clear
everything up. But there may still be other issue. Some
users have reported that Vista considers
all <code class="literal">http:</code> connections insecure, and thus
will always fail any authentication challenges from Apache
unless the connection happens
over <code class="literal">https:</code>. If you're unable to connect
to the Subversion repository via SSL, you can tweak the
system registry to turn off this behavior. Just set the
key <code class="literal">HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient\Parameters\BasicAuthLevel</code>
from 1 to 2. A final warning: be sure to set up the Web
Folder to point to the repository's root directory
(<code class="filename">/</code>), rather than some subdirectory
like <code class="filename">/trunk</code>. Vista Web Folders only
seems to work against repository roots.</p><p>In general, while these workarounds may function for
you, you might get a better overall experience using a
third-party WebDAV client like WebDrive or NetDrive.</p></div><div class="sect3" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h4 class="title"><a id="svn.webdav.clients.file-explorer-extensions.linux-de"></a>Nautilus, Konqueror</h4></div></div></div><p>Nautilus is the official file manager/browser for the
GNOME desktop (<a class="ulink" href="http://www.gnome.org" target="_top">http://www.gnome.org</a>), and
Konqueror is the manager/browser for the KDE desktop (<a class="ulink" href="http://www.kde.org" target="_top">http://www.kde.org</a>). Both of these applications have
an explorer-level WebDAV client built-in, and operate just
fine against an autoversioning repository.</p><p>In GNOME's Nautilus, from the <span class="guimenu">File
menu</span>, select <span class="guimenuitem">Open
location</span> and enter the URL. The repository
should then be displayed like any other filesystem.</p><p>In KDE's Konqueror, you need to use the
<code class="literal">webdav://</code> scheme when entering the URL in
the location bar. If you enter
an <code class="literal">http://</code> URL, Konqueror will behave
like an ordinary web browser. You'll likely see the generic
HTML directory listing produced
by <span class="command"><strong>mod_dav_svn</strong></span>. By entering
<code class="literal">webdav://host/repos</code> instead of
<code class="literal">http://host/repos</code>, Konqueror becomes a
WebDAV client and displays the repository as a
filesystem.</p></div></div><div class="sect2" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a id="svn.webdav.clients.fs-impl"></a>WebDAV filesystem implementation</h3></div></div></div><p>The WebDAV filesystem implementation is arguably the best
sort of WebDAV client. It's implemented as a low-level
filesystem module, typically within the operating system's
kernel. This means that the DAV share is mounted like any
other network filesystem, similar to mounting an NFS share on
Unix, or attaching an SMB share as drive letter in Windows.
As a result, this sort of client provides completely
transparent read/write WebDAV access to all programs.
Applications aren't even aware that WebDAV requests are
happening.</p><div class="sect3" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h4 class="title"><a id="svn.webdav.clients.fs-impl.windows"></a>WebDrive, NetDrive</h4></div></div></div><p>Both WebDrive and NetDrive are excellent commercial
products which allow a WebDAV share to be attached as drive
letters in Windows. We've had nothing but success with
these products. At the time of writing, WebDrive can be
purchased from South River Technologies (<a class="ulink" href="http://www.southrivertech.com" target="_top">http://www.southrivertech.com</a>). NetDrive ships with
Netware, is free of charge, and can be found by searching
the web for “<span class="quote">netdrive.exe</span>”. Though it is
freely available online, users are required to have a
Netware license. (If any of that sounds odd to you, you're
not alone. See this page on Novell's website: <a class="ulink" href="http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/qna/999.html" target="_top">http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/qna/999.html</a>)</p></div><div class="sect3" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h4 class="title"><a id="svn.webdav.clients.fs-impl.macosx"></a>Mac OS X</h4></div></div></div><p>Apple's OS X operating system has an integrated
filesystem-level WebDAV client. From the Finder, select the
<span class="guimenuitem">Connect to Server</span> item from the
<span class="guimenu">Go menu</span>. Enter a WebDAV URL, and it
appears as a disk on the desktop, just like any other
mounted volume. You can also mount a WebDAV share from the
Darwin terminal by using the <code class="literal">webdav</code>
filesystem type with the <span class="command"><strong>mount</strong></span> command:</p><pre class="screen">
$ mount -t webdav http://svn.example.com/repos/project /some/mountpoint
$
</pre><p>Note that if your <span class="command"><strong>mod_dav_svn</strong></span> is
older than version 1.2, OS X will refuse to mount the share
as read-write; it will appear as read-only. This is because
OS X insists on locking support for read-write shares, and
the ability to lock files first appeared in Subversion
1.2.</p><p>One more word of warning: OS X's WebDAV client can
sometimes be overly sensitive to HTTP redirects. If OS X is
unable to mount the repository at all, you may need to enable
the BrowserMatch directive in the Apache server's
<code class="filename">httpd.conf</code>:</p><pre class="screen">
BrowserMatch "^WebDAVFS/1.[012]" redirect-carefully
</pre></div><div class="sect3" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h4 class="title"><a id="svn.webdav.clients.fs-impl.linux"></a>Linux davfs2</h4></div></div></div><p>Linux davfs2 is a filesystem module for the Linux kernel,
whose development is located at <a class="ulink" href="http://dav.sourceforge.net/" target="_top">http://dav.sourceforge.net/</a>. Once installed, a WebDAV
network share can be mounted with the usual Linux mount
command:</p><pre class="screen">
$ mount.davfs http://host/repos /mnt/dav
</pre></div></div><div class="footnotes"><br /><hr width="100" align="left" /><div class="footnote"><p><sup>[<a id="ftn.id450584" href="#id450584" class="para">63</a>] </sup>WebDAV support was removed from Microsoft Access for
some reason, but exists in the rest of the Office
suite.</p></div></div></div><div class="navfooter"><hr /><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="svn.webdav.autoversioning.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="svn.webdav.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="svn.3rdparty.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">Autoversioning </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> Appendix D. Third Party Tools</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
