Version Control with Subversion, 2nd Edition

High-Speed Tutorial

“Please make sure your seat backs are in their full, upright position and that your tray tables are stored. Flight attendants, prepare for take-off….”

What follows is a quick tutorial that walks you through some basic Subversion configuration and operation. When you finish it, you should have a general understanding of Subversion’s typical usage.

Note

The examples used in this appendix assume that you have svn, the Subversion command-line client, and svnadmin, the administrative tool, ready to go on a Unix-like operating system. (This tutorial also works at the Windows command-line prompt, assuming you make some obvious tweaks.) We also assume you are using Subversion 1.2 or later (run svn --version to check).

Subversion stores all versioned data in a central repository. To begin, create a new repository:

$ svnadmin create /var/svn/repos
$ ls /var/svn/repos
conf/  dav/  db/  format  hooks/  locks/  README.txt

This command creates a new directory, /var/svn/repos, which contains a Subversion repository. This new directory contains (among other things) a collection of database files. You won’t see your versioned files if you peek inside. For more information about repository creation and maintenance, see Chapter 5.

Subversion has no concept of a “project.” The repository is just a virtual versioned filesystem, a large tree that can hold anything you wish. Some administrators prefer to store only one project in a repository, and others prefer to store multiple projects in ...