How to fix the TortoiseSVN "invalid port number" problem

I waste a while to find the solution to this problem, searching the web and trying and melting various recipes. The following solution worked fine for me, both for plain TortoiseSVN under Windows.

Problem: When you try to connect to the repository hosted by another machine over a network (LAN or Internet) with SSH protocol, using PuTTY as client, you get an error like this:

"Invalid Port Number"

and after that the connection hangs or falls down.


Solution: Right-Click into a whichever folder; a pop-up menu shows up. Open the "TortoiseSVN" and then the "Settings" menu. Check the "Network" section: the "SSH client" field must be empty.

Now open PuTTY.exe and check the name you give to the session for connecting the machine where your SVN repository is. Assume you named "mysvnhost" the session to connect the "host.example.net" machine.

Now you have to use this name at the place of the machine name, when you set the address for the "svn+ssh" access protocol. For example like this:

svn+ssh://username@mysvnhost/folder/folder/svn/repository/trunk/