svn is failing to install via Chocolately in Windows CI

[ichard26]

I've noticed this error twice today. It appears to be persistent and new:

Chocolatey v2.5.1
Installing the following packages:
svn
By installing, you accept licenses for the packages.
Downloading package from source 'https://community.chocolatey.org/api/v2/'

svn v1.8.15 [Approved]
svn package files install completed. Performing other installation steps.
Attempt to get headers for https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32svn/files/1.8.15/Setup-Subversion-1.8.15.msi failed.
  The remote file either doesn't exist, is unauthorized, or is forbidden for url 'https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32svn/files/1.8.15/Setup-Subversion-1.8.15.msi'. Exception calling "GetResponse" with "0" argument(s): "The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden."
Downloading svn 
  from 'https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32svn/files/1.8.15/Setup-Subversion-1.8.15.msi'
ERROR: The remote file either doesn't exist, is unauthorized, or is forbidden for url 'https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32svn/files/1.8.15/Setup-Subversion-1.8.15.msi'. Exception calling "GetResponse" with "0" argument(s): "The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden." 
This package is likely not broken for licensed users - see https://docs.chocolatey.org/en-us/features/private-cdn.
The install of svn was NOT successful.
Error while running 'C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\svn\tools\chocolateyInstall.ps1'.
 See log for details.

https://github.com/pypa/pip/actions/runs/19213774603/job/54919974877

I don't see an immediate fix. The link preceded by "This package is likely not broken for licensed users" is broken and returns 404.

We honestly may be reaching a point where it is too difficult to retain support for subversion and ~~mercurial~~ Bazaar (https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/13568#issuecomment-3341911352) as they are increasingly hard to install in CI.

[ichard26]

I did some more digging and the Chocolatey docs seem to suggest that the blame lies with GitHub Actions:

• You have a proxy that you need to configure
• It is being blocked in your organization
• We broke something (this is the least likely reason)
• CloudFlare has blocked your IP due to reasons (99% of the time, this is the issue)
• The Chocolatey Community Team may have blocked access due to excessive use - see excessive use for details

[notatallshaw]

There are alternative approaches to installing an SVN client other than chocolatey, I only ended up choosing that one because there were examples in the GitHub documentation of installing windows tooling via chocolatey.

Before finding that GitHub documentation I was going to use winget / TortoiseSVN, let me see if I can quickly revive that approach.

[pfmoore]

I'm happy if you can get the svn tests to work again, but I agree with @ichard26 that subversion and Bazaar might be reaching a point where the work involved in keeping the tests working isn't justified by the benefits (do we even know if anyone still uses the svn/bzr support?)

[notatallshaw]

The SVN issue looks relatively easy to fix (https://github.com/pypa/pip/pull/13645).

The issue with bzr seems to be a genuine bug in either bzr or Ubuntu's redistribution of bzr, I've been meaning to report an issue to both trackers for some time but never got round to it.

If bzr was the only thing blocking updating to Ubuntu 24.04+ I would be happy to turn off tests for that platform with a note about the issue and update, however the bigger issue blocking the failing PEP 668 tests, so I think we need to decide what to do about those first.