Version Control For Beginners: Getting Started With Subversion
Setting Up a Repository
February 9, 2009
Subversion is a version control system: It keeps a
record of changes over the lifetime of a file, allowing you to revert to an
earlier version at will. It's particularly useful for code projects, but it
can handle, and be useful for, pretty much any type of file (e.g., for
tutorials!). It's available as a package for most Linux distros, or as source
from the web site. Setting Up a Repository
svnadmin create /usr/share/svn/repos |
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| Creating a Repository |
The first step in using Subversion is to set up a repository. This is your storage space ��� you don't work on files within it. Instead, you check files out into
a working space to make changes, and then check them back in to record your
changes.
To set up a new repository, simply type:(Note that /usr/share/svn/ must exist already). Within the
repository, you can have multiple projects, stored as multiple directories.
Importing Existing Files Into a Repository
When starting a new project, you'll probably want to import existing files
into it. For a project currently in /home/user/myproject: cd /home/user
svn import myproject file:///usr/share/svn/repos/
myproject -m "Initial import" |
(This will take a little while if you have many files.) The -m
switch attaches the log message. If you leave this out you'll be prompted for
a message.
Your current working copy of these files ��� the directory you imported
them from ��� is not a Subversion-controlled copy.
Before you do any more work on these files, you must check them back
out of Subversion, using the command: svn checkout file:///usr/share/svn/repos/myproject |
This will create a myproject subdirectory in your current directory
and check out all the files from that project into it.Working With Files
You now have your repository and your working directory, so you can work
with files and check any changes back into Subversion. Let's start by
creating a new file, newfile.txt. Once you've created the file in
your working directory, add it to the repository with:
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| Subversion in Action |
This command, however, doesn't actually finalize the add ��� it just
schedules it to be added next time you do a commit. To actually commit the
file to the repository, type:You'll be asked to enter a logfile message ��� make sure you fill in
something that will make sense to you later! (To avoid the prompt, use the
-m "logfile message" switch.) The file, and any other updates, will
be committed to the repository.
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