Some popular file explorer GUI programs support WebDAV extensions that allow a user to browse a DAV share as though 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 “network place.” 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.
Microsoft was one of the original backers of the WebDAV specification and first started shipping a client in Windows 98, which was known as Web Folders. This client was also shipped in Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000.
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 My Computer. In Windows 2000, simply add a new “network place,” enter the URL, and the WebDAV share will pop up for browsing.
With the release of Windows XP, Microsoft started shipping a new
implementation of Web Folders, known as the WebDAV Mini-Redirector.
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 (http://host/repos
) into Universal Naming
Convention (UNC) share notation
(\host
epos
); it also often tries to
use Windows Domain authentication to respond to basic-auth HTTP
challenges, sending usernames as HOSTusername
. These interoperability
problems are severe and are 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 that XP Web Folders
simply can’t operate against an Apache server.
Windows Vista’s initial implementation of Web Folders seems to be almost the same as XP’s, so it has the same sort of problems. With luck, Microsoft will remedy these issues in a Vista Service Pack.
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.
On Windows XP, you have two options. First, search Microsoft’s web site
for update KB90730, “Software Update for Web Folders.”
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 Network Places and adding a new
network place. When prompted, enter the URL of the repository, but
include a port number in the URL. For example,
you should enter http://host/repos
as
http://host:80/repos
instead. Respond to any
authentication prompts with your Subversion credentials.
On Windows Vista, the same KB90730 update may clear everything
up. But there may still be other issues. Some users have reported that
Vista considers all http://
connections insecure, and thus will always fail any authentication
challenges from Apache unless the connection happens over https://
. If you’re unable to connect to the
Subversion repository via SSL, you can tweak the system registry to
turn off this behavior. Just change the value of the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesWebClientParametersBasicAuthLevel
key from 1
to 2
. A final
warning: be sure to set up the Web Folder to point to the repository’s
root directory (/), rather than
some subdirectory such as /trunk.
Vista Web Folders seems to work only against repository roots.
In general, while these workarounds may function for you, you might get a better overall experience using a third-party WebDAV client such as WebDrive or NetDrive.
Nautilus is the official file manager/browser for the GNOME desktop (http://www.gnome.org), and Konqueror is the manager/browser for the KDE desktop (http://www.kde.org). Both of these applications have an explorer-level WebDAV client built-in, and they operate just fine against an autoversioning repository.
In GNOME’s Nautilus, select the
menu item and enter the URL in the dialog box presented. The repository should then be displayed like any other filesystem.In KDE’s Konqueror, you need to use the webdav://
scheme when entering the URL in
the location bar. If you enter an http://
URL, Konqueror will behave like an
ordinary web browser. You’ll likely see the generic HTML directory
listing produced by mod_dav_svn.
When you enter webdav://host/repos
instead of
http://host/repos
, Konqueror becomes a WebDAV
client and displays the repository as a filesystem.