Version Control with Subversion

This is the Title of the Book, eMatter Edition

Copyright © 2007 O’Reilly & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Generally speaking, only the truly paranoid would need to backup their entire repos-

itory, say, every time a commit occurred. However, assuming that a given repository

has some other redundancy mechanism in place with relatively fine granularity (such

as per-commit emails), a hot backup of the database might be something that a

repository administrator would want to include as part of a system-wide nightly

backup. For most repositories, archived commit emails alone provide sufficient

redundancy as restoration sources, at least for the most recent few commits. But it’s

your data—protect it as much as you’d like.

Often, the best approach to repository backups is a diversified one. You can leverage

combinations of full and incremental backups, plus archives of commit emails. The

Subversion developers, for example, back up the Subversion source code repository

after every new revision is created, and keep an archive of all the commit and prop-

erty change notification emails. Your solution might be similar, but should be

catered to your needs and that delicate balance of convenience with paranoia. And

while all of this might not save your hardware from the iron fist of Fate,

*

it should

certainly help you recover from those trying times.

Adding Projects

Once your repository ...