[Red Hat Central] Update to latest Subclipse & older SVNKit

Hi,

I have a customer who is having issues with Subversion in JBDS 11.3.

They have installed Subclipse + SVNKit from RedHat Central and then create a new project, then add the project to SVN. They then update a dummy text file in the project.
They then try to synchronize the project and after this all of the team options are greyed out.

The only exception in the log is:

!ENTRY org.tigris.subversion.subclipse.core 4 -6 2018-05-10 15:41:57.217
!MESSAGE The SVN synchronization information for 'jClaretyBatchClientProject' has become corrupt or does not exist.

!ENTRY org.tigris.subversion.subclipse.ui 4 -6 2018-05-10 15:41:57.217
!MESSAGE Property Exception
!STACK 0
java.lang.NullPointerException
    at org.tigris.subversion.subclipse.ui.properties.SVNPropertyPage.getStatus(SVNPropertyPage.java:290)
    at org.tigris.subversion.subclipse.ui.properties.SVNPropertyPage.createContents(SVNPropertyPage.java:81)
    at org.eclipse.jface.preference.PreferencePage.createControl(PreferencePage.java:241)
    at org.eclipse.jface.preference.PreferenceDialog.createPageControl(PreferenceDialog.java:1426)
    at org.eclipse.jface.preference.PreferenceDialog$8.run(PreferenceDialog.java:1193)
    at org.eclipse.core.runtime.SafeRunner.run(SafeRunner.java:42)
    at org.eclipse.ui.internal.JFaceUtil.lambda$0(JFaceUtil.java:44)
   ...

If they download the latest Subclipse version plus JavaHL and use this instead of SVNKit it works.

They wanted to have JavaHL as an option in RedHat Central but I advised this wasn't going to happen as per [1].

They raised the issue with Subclipse with this response:

"There are no options in the product that are predicated on using one adapter or the other. There can be bugs or slight differences in behavior in one API implementation or the other, but both provide all of the API's we use. JavaHL is already the default implementation provided that it has been installed and is available.

So obviously you had some kind of problem here, but your diagnosis of the causes was not correct. I do generally recommend you use JavaHL if possible, since that is the API implementation that comes from Subversion itself so is going to be most compatible with the SVN command line and other clients you might be using. That said, SVNKit generally offers very good compatibility as well.

I am closing this just because I do not see that there is anything here that can be acted upon."

Any ideas on why SVNKit might not be working here?

Cheers
Dave

[1] https://issues.jboss.org/browse/JBIDE-14795

SF case ref: https://gss--c.na7.visual.force.com/apex/Case_View?id=500A000000aqrrSIAQ
Portal Case Ref: https://access.redhat.com/support/cases/#/case/02094880