It appears that starting with version 1.9, svn will now generate errors if you use svn propget and the value is not defined. Earlier versions would just return blank. I am now getting a warning W200017 because the property svn:ignore has not been set. This "error" is caught in the proc setup_dir in file workdir.tcl, and essentially prevents tkcvs from working. I have fixed my copy by ignoring the error and setting the result to blank. I am attaching a diff file for workdir.tcl.
Now an error is reported in the trace window if debugging is on, but everything works