I found the solution to my issue. The main error message I had got was
Expected FS format between '1' and '6'; found format '7' at
{hidden}/git/perl/build/lib/Git/SVN.pm line 310.
After some online searches, I found out that file system format 7 was 'understood' by subversion 1.9 (Filesystem formats section in https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/subversion/trunk/subversion/libsvn_fs_fs/structure). That's when I realized I was using version 1.9 of subversion. When I downgraded to subversion 1.8 (which understands file format 6), all tests passed.So shouldn't the test file itself have mentioned (say as a comment at the top
or in a separate README) that it was expecting subversion 1.8 or lesser on the system? I am using Ubuntu 18.04 and by default the package manager installs subversion 1.9.This issue might also be present in other git-svn test files. (I haven't checked
though, not sure how to run just git-svn tests)
