Subversion

MediaWiki's SVN uses SSH public key so you don't need a password, so you'll need to supply your ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub file to the person setting up your commit access (if that files doesn't exist, run ssh-keygen from non-root shell using blank passwd when prompted, see this link for details). Also, you need to set up your auto-props. Note also that the commit's are automatically shown on the #mediawiki IRC channel (see freenode FAQ re registering a nickname etc) so it's good to have that open when working on the MediaWiki code.

The WikiMedia repository

See MW:Subversion for details about using MediaWikis SVN. Here's some examples showing retrieval of the current version of the code-base, the current version of an extension, and a version of an extension for MediaWiki 1.16 respectively.

svn co http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/phase3

svn co http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/TreeAndMenu

svn co http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/branches/REL1_16/extensions/TreeAndMenu

Usage

The most important command to know is how to get help;

svn help
svn help checkout # Help on check(ing)out project to CLIENT copy
svn help commmit  # Help on commit(ting) changes to SERVER

To obtain a log of the changes made in a svn project;

svn log -v http://[PATH TO SERVER SVN PROJECT]

Or to get changes between a certain date range in a local repo;

svn log -r {2012-02-10}:{2012-02-15}

To create a new repository on the server ready for importing a directory of files;

cd /tmp
mkdir SERVER
svnadmin create /tmp/SERVER/newrepos

This creates a concise database directory for the new repository on the SERVER in the directory called /tmp/SERVER;

ls -l /tmp/SERVER/newrepos
total 16
-rw-r--r--    1 User  wheel  379 Apr  3 13:58 README.txt
drwxr-xr-x    4 User  wheel  136 Apr  3 13:58 conf
drwxr-xr-x    2 User  wheel   68 Apr  3 13:58 dav
drwxr-xr-x   10 User  wheel  340 Apr  3 13:58 db
-r--r--r--    1 User  wheel    2 Apr  3 13:58 format
drwxr-xr-x   11 User  wheel  374 Apr  3 13:58 hooks
drwxr-xr-x    4 User  wheel  136 Apr  3 13:58 locks

Create an example directory for upload;

cd /tmp
mkdir MYTREE
echo '#!/usr/bin/perl -w\nprint "hello world";' > /tmp/MYTREE/helloWorld.pl
svn import /tmp/MYTREE file:///tmp/SERVER/newrepos/some/project

Listing the contents in the repository directory path;

svn list file:///tmp/SERVER/newrepos/some/project

To make a local copy you need to use the checkout command. This creates a new directory (default called newrepos) which is a local copy of newrepos.

mkdir CLIENT
cd CLIENT
svn co file:///tmp/SERVER/newrepos/some/project/  # fetches project/test.pl
svn co file:///tmp/SERVER/newrepos/some/          # fetches some/project/test.pl
rm -rf /tmp/CLIENT  
svn co file:///tmp/SERVER/newrepos/some/project/ /tmp/CLIENT # Creates CLIENT dir

Note: The directory the svn command is run in determines where the local checkout directories and files will end up.

Now that you have created a local copy all work should be conducted within it. There is a hidden directory called .svn which contains all the information required for the svn framework;

cd /tmp/CLIENT # Work in the local copy of svn

To update a file on your CLIENT directory;

cd /tmp/CLIENT
svn update # "." is updated 
cd /tmp
svn update /tmp/CLIENT # Specifying path

To add a new file to the local svn copy, first make a new file within the directory structure;

cd /tmp/CLIENT
echo '#!/usr/bin/perl -w\nprint qq(hello world!);' > /tmp/CLIENT/helloWorld2.pl
svn add helloWorld2.pl

The status command will identify differences between the CLIENT copy and the SERVER copy of the repoistory;

svn status /tmp/CLIENT

The following list provides the details of svn status output;

L      abc.c               # svn has a lock in its .svn directory for abc.c
M      bar.c               # the content in bar.c has local modifications
M      baz.c               # baz.c has property but no content modifications
X      3rd_party           # this dir is part of an externals definition
?      foo.o               # svn doesn't manage foo.o
!      some_dir            # svn manages this, but it's either missing or incomplete
~      qux                 # versioned as file/dir/link, but type has changed
I      .screenrc           # svn doesn't manage this, and is configured to ignore it
A  +   moved_dir           # added with history of where it came from
M  +   moved_dir/README    # added with history and has local modifications
D      stuff/fish.c        # this file is scheduled for deletion
A      stuff/loot/bloo.h   # this file is scheduled for addition
C      stuff/loot/lump.c   # this file has conflicts from an update
R      xyz.c               # this file is scheduled for replacement
S      stuff/squawk        # this file or dir has been switched to a branch

Problems

When attempting to import the /var/www structure into the /var/svn/www repository it bailed after coming across a filename containing special characters with the following fatal error:

svn: Can't convert string from native encoding to 'UTF-8':
svn: A?\195?\164o?\195?\188.gif

SVN GUI's

• WebSVN
• Linux: kdesvn - and many others
• Windows: tortoisesvn
• Macos: svnx

See also

• Configure SVN - our procedure for setting up SVN and WebSVN on our servers
• MediaWiki SVN Statistics
• Subversion cheatsheet
• Subversion book
• CodeSwarm - renders video's of subversion repository activity
• Changing the username of a revision