Project Subversion Source Code

The Subversion sources are now under revision control in a Subversion repository. The CVS repository is obsolete (though you can still browse online the old CVS ChangeLog, or the old CVS repository itself).

For the impatient: by pointing your web browser directly at Subversion's repository, you can browse the latest source. Because we use HTTP/WebDAV/DeltaV as our network protocol, we get very basic 'web' functionality for free.

For real work: you need to "bootstrap" Subversion. That is, use Subversion to check out a working copy of its latest source tree.

  1. Download the latest tarball distribution from the Downloads Page.

  2. Build and install it according to the instructions in the INSTALL file in the top level of the distribution. You will end up with a 'svn' binary in the subversion/clients/cmdline/ directory (or installed in /usr/local/bin/, if you ran 'make install'.)

  3. Use it to check out the newest Subversion source:

          $ svn co http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk subversion

    That will get you a new working copy directory named `subversion/', containing the latest, bleeding-edge source. (If you're behind a proxy or have problems with the checkout, see the proxy faq.)

    (Some people have reported DNS lookup errors for `svn.collab.net'. The IP address is 216.127.237.133, in case you should need it.)

  4.       cd subversion
      svn status
      svn update
      etc, etc, etc...

  5. Now you have a working copy. Most commands work like you would expect. Many of them have bugs, or misconfigured defaults. Many features are missing. Please make sure you're subscribed to dev@subversion.tigris.org if you're going to run this.

    Here's a hint: read the Subversion Handbook, and in particular its SVN for CVS Users appendix. It should help.

  6. Generally, you should always rebuild and install Subversion from your working copy (read the INSTALL and HACKING files). The latest available tarball is still not as recent as an up-to-date working copy.

  7. Read the Warnings and Inconveniences Page for information about some particularly annoying bugs and their workarounds.

Contributing To The Project

To contribute to Subversion:

  • Join the developer community mailing lists: (see the Mailing Lists page.)

  • The Subversion project more-or-less abides by the guidelines used by the Apache APR project. Please review these.

  • After checking out a copy of the source as described above, read the file HACKING at the top of the tree. It describes coding and logging conventions, as well as how to build from a working copy.