CCNET & Subversion: Invalid SSL Certificate

As we are developing our automated deployment pipeline and are refactoring our build process anyway, we have decided that now is the time to make the long awaited switch from Visual Source Safe to Subversion for our source code control. With a SVN server already installed and a repository ready and waiting we set to work changing our ccnet.config to use Subversion source code control blocks. It was then that this issue raised its head.

The Problem

Our SVN server was configured to use SSL for a little bit of extra security and best practice. The thing is that the SSL certificate was a self certified one (rather than an official one from a recognised body) which means the svn.exe console application used by Cruise Control.NET was prompting as to whether the certificate should be accepted (due to its invalidity). The trouble is, CCNET had no idea what to do and just errored then and there.

The Solution

To overcome this issue we had to log in and manually run the SVN console application against the repository. When prompted we said to accept the certificate permanently. This had to be done with the same user under which the CCNET service runs.

Once this was done CCNET could access Subversion successfully and we were on our way to a successful switch.