Subversion is a version control system that is widely used by many Open Source projects such as Apache and GCC. Subversion started as a project to implement features missing in CVS. Some of these features are:
- Subversion tracks structure of folders. CVS doesn't have the concept of folders.
- Subversion has a global revision number for the whole repository. CVS tracks each file individually. A commit that represents one logical change to the project code may change a group of files; in Subversion, this commit will have one revision number instead of separate revision numbers for every changed file in CVS.
- Subversion commits are atomic.
- Subversion retains the revision history of moved or copied files.
Subversion commands are very similar to CVS. It's very easy to switch for CVS users. Most of the time it's a matter of replacing cvs with svn. The following is a tutorial and cheat-sheet to help you get up and running in Subversion quickly.
Installation
The first step for using Subversion is installing it. This depends on your system. In Ubuntu and Debian, it a matter of running the following command:
$ sudo apt-get install subversion
Subversion has packages for many systems, Linux (Gentoo, Debian, Fedora, ...), Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Windows, ...
Creating the Repository
The first Subversion tool we will use is svnadmin. This tool is for administration tasks, like creating repositories, making backup dumps, and the like. To create a repository, open the command line, change the current directory to where you want to create it, and run svnadmin:
$ cd /home/ayman $ svnadmin create svn
(I created my repository under my home directory: /home/ayman)
I called my repository svn. You can call it whatever you like. Subversion uses this directory to store information about your projects, like file revisions. You won't need to directly deal with this directory, so I suggest keeping it in a safe place and not tinkering with its contents unless you know what you're doing.
Importing Projects
Now that we have a repository, we will use the svn tool to import and manage projects. To import a project, first create a directory for it in your repository. To do so run svn mkdir:
$ svn mkdir file:///home/ayman/svn/myproj
(Replace /home/ayman/svn/myproj with the actual path to your repository and the new project name)
Subversion will open your default text editor and ask you to enter a log message. Enter an explanation of what you're doing, save, and exit the editor.
Next, it's time to import project files. Change the current directory to the project's directory, and run svn import:
$ cd /home/ayman/[...]/myproj $ svn import file:///home/ayman/svn/myproj
(This will import all files under /home/ayman/[...]/myproj to the newly-created myproj directory in your repository)
Check out, Modify, Commit
As I said, the repository is stored in the svn directory which you won't deal with. To work on your files, first you need to check a working copy out of the repository. To do so, use svn checkout:
$ svn checkout file:///home/ayman/svn
A new directory named myproj will be created containing your project files. You can work and modify them. Once you're done and you want to store the new revision in your repository, run svn commit in the checked-out myproj directory:
$ svn commit
Subversion will open your default editor asking for a log message. Again, enter an explanation, save, and exit.
Working with Revisions
Now let's make real use of Subversion. While working with revisions, you can:
Check Status
$ svn status <filename>
Compare different Revisions
$ svn compare -r R1:R2 <filename>
(Replace R1 and R2 with actual revision numbers you want to compare)
Revert Local Edits
$ svn revert <filename>
Revert to Previous Revisions
$ svn update -r R
(Replace R with an actual revision number)
<filename> is optional; you can run the previous commands on the current directory if you omit it.
Final Word
This is a very quick start for using Subversion to control local projects. For extended help on commands, you can always use svn help <command> to get a help message on <command>, for example:
svn help import
This will give a detailed explanation on svn import.
In addition, check out "Version Control with Subversion" for more information.
Good luck, and happy subversion'ing!
Comments
JVA
Version Control, is an essential tool in software engineering, so good for you to switch into this organized programming world, no lost versions anymore, no overwritten version either. I use CVS, i've heard that SVN is better, but CVS is more popular "as far as i know", and i started with CVS first. I do basic management of my source, no branches and stuff, so i'll stick to CVS. Anyway, nice tutorial.
Posted at 4:23 p.m. on January 13, 2006
nart
btw, its also nice to use Trac (http://www.edgewall.com/trac/) with svn for collaborative projects.
Posted at 1:39 p.m. on February 14, 2006
Dandor
It's a nice little tutorial. Just one remark. I think it's a better idea to create repositories on per project basis, this way you will have separate numbering for different projects. Anyway it's a very useful summary.
Posted at 2:56 a.m. on March 16, 2006
Ayman Hourieh
Fixed. Thanks. I installed a new filter that broke this article.
Posted at 2:56 p.m. on August 20, 2006
prasad iyer
Very well written. I am setting up my repository now. Thanks for the help
Posted at 9:04 p.m. on August 30, 2008
Pelle
Dear all,
I'm only just getting started with version control and I chose subversion with TortoiseSVN for my needs. I had thought about doing repositories per project, too, but somehow I feel like this is not intended. Does anyone know where to start reading about repository-layout and whether it's a good or bad idea to do this on a per-project approach or rather do repositories for a single group of developers or whatever?
Any help on this would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks, Pelle.
Posted at 12:05 p.m. on September 12, 2008
Aamod
Very neatly written and useful for lazy people like me. Using svn after just reading this single page.
Thanks ;-)
Posted at 3:44 p.m. on October 24, 2008
Ahmed El Gamil
Thanks Ayman for this simple yet powerful tutorial
Posted at 8:17 p.m. on November 17, 2008
DJ
Thanks for the simple version of setting this up.
Posted at 12:28 a.m. on February 11, 2009
Abdullah
Well written totorial. Thanks
Posted at 1:22 p.m. on February 16, 2009
al
i have installed Subversion in Ubuntu but how do i access it from WinXp.
Posted at 12:31 p.m. on March 3, 2009
Matthew Frazier
Thanks for putting this together. A very clean, concise guide to setting up a simple versioning system. I was up and running in under 15 minutes.
Posted at 4:54 p.m. on March 20, 2009
Anonymous
Don't know why anyone would want to use a command prompt and not the context menu (assuming you're using windows) to do all this above. Same with using Visual SVN Server. Command prompt is sooo tedious.
Posted at 3:18 a.m. on April 21, 2009
GeekyGrad
This is a great piece of work - I linked to it in my article on using Subversion for LaTeX files.
Posted at 8:25 p.m. on April 30, 2009
Igor Grinkin
I'm using:
did not work for me :(
worked fine.
I'd also add
It shows you the revision numbers
Thanks for the tutorial!
Posted at 5:30 p.m. on July 6, 2009
Anonymous
I'd give you 3 thumbs up if I could...
Posted at 5:44 p.m. on August 19, 2009
Ali
Thanks for this short and to the point article... Many thanks,
Posted at 1:10 a.m. on September 14, 2009
Binary Soldier
Having just installed Subversion today it's great to find such a useful quick start guide.
Version checking is something new to me, and since SVN seems to be the industry standard, I thought I should get to grips with it as soon as possible.
Thanks for sharing!
Posted at 12:11 a.m. on September 25, 2009
Chris
Just wanted to say thanks for this... I've been tearing my hair out trying to get this working and set up with my svn client; so much of the documentation/forum-responses have been useless... very nicely done.
For any other folks using this approach to set up the repo, and are looking to use Tortoise, or Versions, or some other GUI to access it, I was getting hung up on finding the right URL to direct the client to... turns out it was ssh login plus the absolute path from the server root down to the svn project directory
e.g., svn+ssh://username@testsite.com/home/domains/xyz.com/html/svn/my_proj
Posted at 5:45 a.m. on September 28, 2009
ge
Thanks for posting this article.
I'm trying to learn SVN and am having trouble connecting to a remote SVN server I've recently setup on a Windows machine.
I've created a repository on the server with the following full path: C:svntest_repository.
When I try to create a project directory in the repository using
"svn mkdir http://mySvnServer.myDomain/svn/test_repository/new_project" It returns an http "200 OK" message but no directory ever gets created on the server.
If I try to do an initial import of a project I get a similar result.
"svn import http://mysvnserver.myDomain/c$/test_repository" returns the message "svn: OPTIONS of 'http://mysvnserver.myDomain/c$/svn/test_repository': 200 OK (http://mysvnserver.myDomain) which appears to be OK, except that when I go to the server and check to see if the project directory was created, I find that it has not.
Posted at 6:05 p.m. on October 9, 2009
Darren
Thanks so much for the tutorial, it clarified some of the conceptions I had about this neat little program.
Posted at 5:36 a.m. on January 3, 2010
kobedi
Thank you very much...Good summary.
Posted at 7:14 a.m. on January 6, 2010
Alexander
At first, a very sincere THANK YOU Ayman!one-eleven!
I got subversion up und running in a few minutes.
Al: If you want to access SVN via Studio .net (2005 and Successors) you may be interested in Ankh svn. It works very fine for me.
You may need to tune your authz and passwd files in the svn Root:
http://groups.google.de/group/Subversion-SVN/browse_thread/thread/ebd14b999b67e458
Posted at 6:47 p.m. on January 8, 2010
Yatko
Hi, and thanks for this tutorial. However I was unable to get It work: $ svn mkdir file:///home/ayman/svn/myproj Subversion will open your default text editor and ask you to enter a log message. Enter an explanation of what you're doing, save, and exit the editor. It saves a .tmp file and does not create any directory
svn import file:///home/.... Creates second .tmp file ()
I gave up.... I am sure it is a great toy, but ....for insiders only.
Thank you!
Posted at 2:47 a.m. on February 16, 2010
Ranga
Nice Tutorial. We can learn and do it in matter of 10mins. Thanks Author.
Posted at 7:56 p.m. on May 10, 2010
Nayana Adassuriya
hi all,
I'm a new user for the Visual SVN. I'm using Visual SVN free version and tortoise SVN as client in windows xp environment. I use these configuration for a PHP project. so what i do is visualSVN and xampp install in a same computer and make a make a client environment in side of the xampp root folder using tortoise SVN. now what i want is automatically update the client inside the xampp when somebody comment to the Repository
I tried lot with hook script like fallow
"C:/Program Files/VisualSVN Server/bin/svn.exe" update "H:/WEB SERVER/xampp/htdocs/WEBSERVER/" but it not succeed. and no error message.
please help me to achieve my target.
thanks all, Nayana Adassuriya
Posted at 11:35 a.m. on May 19, 2010
Tarik
It would make more sense to checkout the project I want to work on using: svn checkout file:///home/ayman/svn/myproj instead of svn checkout file:///home/ayman/svn which would checkout each and every project in the repository?
Posted at 10:41 a.m. on May 26, 2010
blnl
When I import my project files into the repository "svn import myproj file:///home/ayman/svn/myproj", "myproj" is still not the working copy. How can I tell svn that I want "myproj" to be the working copy?
Currently I have to delete "myproj" and then again checkout "myproj", but I hope there is a simple way of making the original "myproj" working copy.
Posted at 2:40 p.m. on June 2, 2010
gjwilson21
Simple, yet this the kind of article that really helps people set up their first repository in no time.
Posted at 10:06 p.m. on June 17, 2010