Version Control with Subversion, 2nd Edition

Subversion in Action

It’s time to move from the abstract to the concrete. In this section, we’ll show real examples of Subversion being used.

Subversion Repository URLs

Throughout this book, Subversion uses URLs to identify versioned files and directories in Subversion repositories. For the most part, these URLs use the standard syntax, allowing for server names and port numbers to be specified as part of the URL:

$ svn checkout http://svn.example.com:9834/repos
...

But there are some nuances in Subversion’s handling of URLs that are notable. For example, URLs containing the file:// access method (used for local repositories) must, in accordance with convention, have either a server name of localhost or no server name at all:

$ svn checkout file:///var/svn/repos
...
$ svn checkout file://localhost/var/svn/repos
...

Also, users of the file:// scheme on Windows platforms will need to use an unofficially “standard” syntax for accessing repositories that are on the same machine, but on a different drive than the client’s current working drive. Either of the two following URL path syntaxes will work, where X is the drive on which the repository resides:

C:\> svn checkout file:///X:/var/svn/repos
...
C:\> svn checkout "file:///X|/var/svn/repos"
...

In the second syntax, you need to quote the URL so that the vertical bar character is not interpreted as a pipe. Also, note that a URL uses forward slashes even though the native (non-URL) form of a path on Windows uses backslashes.

Note

You cannot ...