I decided to upgrade my home Subversion repository to version 1.4.3 as soon as it was released. Since then, my ViewVC application has ceased to work, getting a Python exception every time I try to execute it. Creating a small Python program that just imports the library (from svn import fs) gave me the following error:

ImportError: /usr/local/lib/libsvn_ra_dav-1.so.0: undefined symbol: SSL_load_error_strings

Thinking it was an SSL library problem, I upgraded SSL – a few times. I kept mucking with the options, rebuilding Subversion, only to get everything installed and get that same error:

ImportError: /usr/local/lib/libsvn_ra_dav-1.so.0: undefined symbol: SSL_load_error_strings

Over, and over and over again I repeated the process and got the same result. The absolute definition of insanity. This has been going on for a couple of months and I’ve been trying to address it in my spare time, as I’ve been pretty busy lately during the week and gone to the Relaxation Unit the last few weekends.

I googled my ass off to find the error, but to no avail. Finally today I ran across this thread that explained the problem. After going through my distribution directory for 1.4.4 (which I upgraded at the beginning of the month only to receive the same error) I realized that I hadn’t pulled down the Subversion dependencies tarball and rebuilt neon. So, basically I was using an old version of the neon libraries.

I finally settled on the configure statement listed here, after downloading and untarring the deps file:

./configure --with-ssl --with-apxs=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs 
            --with-apr=/usr/local/apache2 --with-apr-util=/usr/local/apache2 
            --enable-shared --with-libs=/usr/local/ssl

This uses the already installed apr libraries that I build with my Apache server, and ensures that the neon shared libraries are built. A quick configure/make/make install/make swig-py/make install-swig-py sequence later and my Python libraries were working fine.

I made it a point this time to document this on the Labs internal wiki, but thought I should throw this out here in public so that others can find it. Hope it helps save the weeks of frustration that I have been suffering for someone out there.

Happy building …