Subversion initial setup

Subversion is a project aims to build a version control system that is a compelling replacement for CVS in the open source community. Besides usual way of doing version control, this is also a good candidate for backup of anything you can imagine. There is a free online book available, if you want to further study it.

Below are some setup notes I have jotted down during my setup. May be this will be helpful to you also.

Setup in Gentoo Linux, as apache2 module

1. If you happens to have apache 2 already installed, setting up Subversion is easy:

# emerge subversion

But in case you are using apache 1.x, you can still go ahead and let portage to install apache 2 for you. There is nothing much harm (other than use more memory) to run both apache 1.x and 2.x together. All you need is just changing the port number apache 2.x is listening to.

2. Create directory for source repository: (you can use whatever directory)

#mkdir /var/repository

3. Create user account for svn:


#mkdir /var/svn/conf
#htpasswd2 -c /var/svn/conf/svnusers newusername


The second command create a new user "newusername" and store the a/c password info in /var/svn/conf/svnusers. The -c option is for file creation, if you are adding more users, you can simply go without this option.

4. To allow apache2 to load the corresponding svn modules, modify /etc/conf.d/apache2 to add "-D DAV -D SVN", e.g.:

APACHE2_OPTS="-D SSL -D PHP4 -D FASTCGI -D DEFAULT_VHOST -D DAV -D SVN"

5. Configure the modules config file /etc/apache2/modules.d/47_mod_dav_svn.conf (you may have number other than 47, depending on the portage maintainer). Assuming we use the password file and repository directory created previously, the file may look like this:

<IfDefine SVN>
    <IfModule !mod_dav_svn.c>
        LoadModule dav_svn_module   modules/mod_dav_svn.so
    </IfModule>
    <Location /repos>
        DAV svn
        SVNPath /file2/repos
        AuthType Basic
        AuthName "WINS Subversion Repository"
        AuthUserFile /var/svn/conf/svnusers
        Require valid-user
    </Location>
    <IfDefine SVN_AUTHZ>
        <IfModule !mod_authz_svn.c>
            LoadModule authz_svn_module modules/mod_authz_svn.so
        </IfModule>
    </IfDefine>
</IfDefine>

6. Create your initial repository:

#svnadmin create /var/repository

Setup in Redhat, standalone server

For illustration purpose, this time, we run subversion for standalone version, and invoked through xinetd.

1. First step is also easy:

#rpm -Uvh subversion-XXXX.rpm

Just replace XXXX with the version currently available in your system.

2. Create a user for svn in your system. For security, you should set it's login shell to nologin.

3. Add 2 lines to /etc/services: (if they don't exist yet)


subversion 3690/tcp # Subversion
subversion 3690/udp # Subversion


4. Create a file /etc/xinetd.d/svn


# subversion server
service svn
{
disable = no
socket_type = stream
protocol = tcp
wait = no
user = svnuser
server = /usr/bin/svnserve
server_args = -i
}


5. Create your initial repository:


#mkdir /var/repository
#svnadmin create /var/repository


6. During initializing the repository directory, svn creates various directories and files. In particular, there is a config file svnserve.conf inside conf directory created. There are extensive comments inside the config file, with all example setting commented out because they are already set by default by svn. Anyway, you can customize them to your needs, e.g.:


[general]
anon-access = none
auth-access = write
password-db = passwd
realm = My Subversion Realm


The above disables anonymous access, and allow write access for authenticated user. Most importantly, it defines the password file for authentication as 'passwd'. Now in the same conf directory, create this file with following content:

[users]
wins=password1
user2=password2

Using subversion
The most important command to know first is help:

$svn help

To get help on a specific topic :

$svn help update

Import initial directory for a project:

For apache module:


$svn mkdir 'http://localhost/repos/NewProject' -m 'Creating new Project'
$svn import ./MyProject 'http://localhost/repos/NewProject/trunk' -m 'Import for 1st time'


Note that '/repos' is defined in Location directive in apache config.

For standalone version, use svn:// instead.


$svn mkdir 'svn://localhost/var/repository/NewProject' -m 'Creating new Project'
$svn import ./MyProject 'svn://localhost/var/repository/NewProject/trunk' -m 'Import for 1st time


Note that the '/var/repository' are actually a full path of the directory where you create for repository.

Before performing any commit, you need to perfrom an update first :

$cd ./Myproject
$svn update


To check your checked out source status :

svn status

The svn will also mark all non-version file inside your checkout directory as '?' status.

To ignore some files from subversion status cmd (or add/import), either set it globally in ~/.subversion/config :

[miscellany]
### Set global-ignores to a set of whitespace-delimited globs
### which Subversion will ignore in its 'status' output.
global-ignores = *.o *.lo *.la #*# .*.rej *.rej .*~ *~ .#* .DS_Store *.class


or set it in svn cmd:

$cd WEB-INF
$svn propset svn:ignore "*" work/

(first arg is the wildcard pattern, second is the path)

to view back any prop set to a path:

$cd WEB-INF
$svn proplist work


To commit your changes:

$svn commit -m 'Some changes...'