Subversion, a version control system. ===================================== $LastChangedDate$ Contents: I. A FEW POINTERS II. DOCUMENTATION III. PARTICIPATING IN THE SUBVERSION COMMUNITY IV. QUICKSTART GUIDE V. CONVERTING FROM CVS I. A FEW POINTERS For an overview of the Subversion project, visit http://subversion.tigris.org/ Once you have a Subversion client you can get the latest version of the code with the command: $ svn co http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk subversion II. DOCUMENTATION The main documentation is the Subversion Book, written in DocBook XML, which lives at http://svn.red-bean.com/svnbook. If you wish to build the documentation from source, read src/en/README. Otherwise, an on-line version of the book can be found at http://svnbook.red-bean.com. See COPYING for copyright information. See INSTALL for installation information. See www/hacking.html for development information. III. PARTICIPATING IN THE SUBVERSION COMMUNITY First, read www/hacking.html! It describes Subversion coding and log message standards, as well as how to join discussion lists. Talk on IRC with developers: irc.freenode.net, channel #svn. Read the FAQ: http://subversion.tigris.org/faq.html IV. QUICKSTART GUIDE Please note that this section is just a quick example for people who want to see Subversion run immediately. It's not an excuse to ignore the book! The Subversion client has an abstract interface for accessing a repository. Three "Repository Access" (RA) implementations currently exist as libraries: libsvn_ra_dav: accesses a networked repository using WebDAV. libsvn_ra_local: accesses a local repository using Berkeley DB. libsvn_ra_svn: accesses a remote repository using a custom protocol. You can see which methods are available to your 'svn' client by running 'svn --version'. The following example assumes that ra_local is available to your client. (If you don't see ra_local, it probably means that Berkeley DB wasn't found when compiling your client binary.) 1. svnadmin create /path/to/repos - this creates a new directory, 'repos'. Make sure that /path/to/repos/ is on local disk, NOT a network share. - make SURE you have complete recursive read/write access to the newly created 'repos' directory. - understand that the repository is mainly a collection of Berkeley DB files; you won't actually see your versioned data if you peek in there. 2. svn import /tmp/project file:///path/to/repos -m "Initial import" - /tmp/project is a tree of data you've pre-arranged. If you can, use this layout, as it will help you later on: /tmp/project/branches/ /tmp/project/tags/ /tmp/project/trunk/ foo.c bar.c baz.c etc. 3. svn checkout file:///path/to/repos/trunk project - this creates a 'project' directory which is a working copy of the /trunk directory in the repository. 4. Try using the repository: - edit a file in your working copy. - run 'svn diff' to see the changes. - run 'svn commit' to commit the changes. - run 'svn up' to bring your working copy up-to-date. Be sure to read chapters 2 and 3, they're a critical introduction to the svn commandline client. 5. Get a real server process running (either apache or svnserve) so that your repository can be made available over a network. Read chapters 5 and 6 to learn about how to administer a repository and how to set up a server process. *** NEWBIES BEWARE: The absolute most common stumbling block for newbies is problems with permissions and ownership on the repository. Any process that opens the repository must have complete read/write access to it. This goes for any tool ('svnadmin', 'svnlook') or any server process (apache, svnserve), or your own svn client, if it's accessing via file:///. Look at the last section in chapter 6 to understand how to tweak repository ownership and permissions for multiple users and processes. V. CONVERTING FROM CVS If you're a CVS user trying to move your CVS history over to Subversion, then be sure to visit the 'cvs2svn' project: http://cvs2svn.tigris.org You can get the latest released version of the cvs2svn converter from the project downloads area: http://cvs2svn.tigris.org/servlets/ProjectDocumentList?folderID=2976 Please note that the cvs2svn project is a *separate* project from Subversion. If you have problems with cvs2svn or are confused, please email the cvs2svn project's mailing lists, not the Subversion lists. Finally, be sure to see Appendix A in the Subversion book. It contains a very quick overview of the major differences between CVS and Subversion.