How to downgrade subversion to version 1.7
Whatever your underlying motivation or use case is: I personally recommended that you do not downgrade. Downgrading to Subversion 1.7 will put your Mac at risk.

Also, for technical reasons, Subversion 1.7 cannot run on El Capitan or later unless a developer is willing to spend considerable effort.

The subversion17 formula was deleted from Homebrew last month, albeit for unrelated reasons. Before it got deleted, a comment in the formula said:


  # Requires system OpenSSL headers to build. &gt;El Capitan no longer ship them.
  # Note this means that this subversion is linked against an outdated OpenSSL
  # and really should not be considered secure.


In other words, not only is Subversion 1.7 unsafe to use on macOS; also, El Capitan or later versions of macOS cannot run 1.7 because the required header files are missing.

For the same reason, well-known Subversion download sources, e. g. WANdisco’s download page, offer Subversion 1.7 releases for OS X Yosemite or earlier but not for current macOS versions.

An alternative approach would be that you post a new question (or edit your existing one) to give more information on what your underlying motivation is.


What are you actually trying to achieve specifically with the 1.7 release?
What specific issue(s) do you anticipate, or have already encountered, using the latest release of Subversion instead, or any other version control package?