Authentication

Never blocked on a prompt

revision always runs svn with --non-interactive. A TUI owns the terminal, so a hidden credential prompt would not be visible and the app would appear to hang. Instead, any command that needs credentials it does not have fails fast with a short, actionable hint:

authentication required — cache SVN credentials, then retry

Caching credentials

Run an svn command yourself in the working copy, once:

cd /path/to/working-copy
svn info

Answer the prompts. SVN stores the credentials in its own auth cache, and revision uses them on every subsequent action. svn update works equally well as the priming command.

This is deliberately SVN’s job, not revision’s: nothing is stored by revision, so there is no second credential store to keep in sync or to leak.

svn+ssh working copies

When the repository URL starts with svn+ssh://, SVN opens an SSH connection for every operation, and that connection needs a key.

At startup, revision:

1. Reads the key at sshKeyPath — default ~/.ssh/id_rsa — and derives its fingerprint with ssh-keygen.
2. Asks ssh-agent which keys it already holds, and matches on that fingerprint. A key that is already loaded is never asked about.
3. If the key is not loaded, prompts once for its passphrase and adds it with ssh-add before loading anything else.

The rest of the session then runs without further prompts.

How the passphrase is handled

The passphrase never touches the terminal revision owns and is never written to disk. It is passed to ssh-add through an SSH_ASKPASS helper — revision re-invoking itself as a tiny single-purpose subprocess — and travels only on that child’s environment, so it lives no longer than the ssh-add call.

The helper answers exactly once. ssh-add normally retries after a wrong passphrase; the second call finds nothing to answer with, so ssh-add gives up instead of spinning.

When it fails

Situation	What happens
Wrong passphrase	A toast reports wrong passphrase (1/3) — try again and the prompt reopens.
Wrong three times	revision stops: the key is required for this working copy.
No ssh-agent running	revision says the agent is unreachable and stops — SVN cannot reach the repository without the key.
Key file missing	Reported as an error from ssh-add.

The three-attempt limit is on revision’s prompt, not on SSH. Start ssh-agent (or re-run under ssh-agent bash) and try again, or load the key yourself with ssh-add before starting.

Loading the key yourself

If you would rather revision never prompt, add the key before starting it:

ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa
revision

revision finds it in the agent and moves on.

Which key?

Point sshKeyPath at the private key your repository host expects — press S and edit the SSH key field. A leading ~ is expanded to your home directory.

Only that one key is checked. If your ~/.ssh/config selects a different key per host, load it into the agent yourself and revision will use whatever the agent holds.