The topics will include:

Introduction to Subversion for Developers – 5th May

All About Subversion Hook Scripts – 19th May

Using Subversion Locking – 2nd June

All About Subversion Checkouts – 16th June

Using the Subversion Diff Command – 30th June

Branching and Merging in Subversion 1.6.9 – 14th July

Feel free to see the website for more information:
http://wandisco.com/webinar/subversion/training

This video covers some basics of TortoiseSVN a client for Subversion.
Steps covered are checking out your code, adding some existing content, commiting changes to repository, reverting to older revision and how to view log and compare two revisions.

Lets start this list

Subversion Home : Home of the great tool you can find the binaries for latest version from the website based on operating system of your choice it also includes collabnet certified binaries.

TortoiseSVN : Most preferred Subversion client for windows

VisualSVN : Great tool to get you started quickly with Subversion without any hassles comes with Apache and wizard based setup is just awesome for newbies

AnkhSVN : Visual studio integration for all M$ fans

RapidSVN : Multi-platform GUI front-end

SVNKIT : Java API for Subversion, pretty easy to get started lot’s examples available and documentation is just awesome

PySVN : Python API for Subversion, nice pythonic interface, some people might differ and point out Subvertpy is more pythonic, I like both of them equally.

This list is In progress and I will keep updating it.

Step1 Install rpmforge repository

Step2 Install Subversion

Step3 Install mod_dav_svn (Only required if you planning Apache Integration)

Voila and you are done, go to command prompt and type following

You should see output as below

So Subversion has come along pretty well since it’s 1.0 release 6 years back and this day I would like to thank all developers who have put in there efforts to make Subversion what it is today; it stands tall among the many commercial tools.

So how I celebrated the Subversion’s birthday I went to svnforum.org and tried to answer queries of people as thats the way you can help Subversion adoption to grow among masses.

Developers are doing there bit by developing it; so we as a part of community need to contribute in what ever way possible.

This day I wish many many happy returns of the day to Subversion and want to congratulate Subversion community for great going looking ahead to more great accomplishments in future.

Dumping the repository

This is the simplest option for dumping the repository for purpose of backing up your repository. If you want to do an incremental back than you need to specify –incremental flag and give start and end revision for same.

Restoring the repository back

Verify the restore

Habit of restoring the data regularly is very important for having usable backup.

Once you are done with above steps we now need to modify Apache’s httpd.conf to include the domain authentication for our Subversion repository make changes to httpd.conf as shown below,  first we need to ensure that we have required modules loaded

To mod_dav_svn to work you need to uncomment the line which loads mod_dav module Apache look for it and uncomment if its commented.

Now the real magic configuration starts which will enable us to authenticate Subversion users against AD domains make changes in httpd.conf as shown below

Once done with above changes save the file and restart Apache and try accessing the URL http://<yourservername>/svn/myrepo you will be prompted for authentication saying “Subversion Domain” enter your domain name without domain as we have SSPIOmitDomain On and based on Subversion authorization file i.e authz in our scenario you will be able to see repository or you will get forbidden error.

We are done with setting up domain authentication, in-case you face any problem with above settings feel free to write to me.

LoadModule sspi_auth_module   modules/mod_auth_sspi.so
LoadModule dav_svn_module     modules/mod_dav_svn.so
LoadModule authz_svn_module   modules/mod_authz_svn.so

The noticeable difference from the keywords expansion in text file is the extra spaces given after :: if you don’t give extra spaces than your file will get corrupted as during expansion the space required for expansion will not be available and hence causing corruption of files.

I am big fan of Subversion thats why I sometime ponder about its future, when I see fanatics talking about GIT, Clearcase and Perforce. I was really saddened when Linus trovalds in his speech said “whole point the Subversion project started is wrong” but I have not found anything wrong with the tool, may be I am not as capable as Linus and neither I am into kernel development but Subversion works pretty well for me and so does for my organization, and there are many other Subversion works for them too.

There is a big wish list which people might have for Subversion but I would say to Subversion developer community add the features which are good for tool as whole and keep in mind that Subversion is version control first anything else later.

WebDAV stands for “Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning”. It is a set of extensions to the HTTP protocol which allows users to collaboratively edit and manage files on remote web servers. The tragedy, though, is that despite the acronym, the RFC specification doesn’t actually describe any sort of version control. Basic WebDAV clients and servers assume only one version of each file or directory exists, and can be repeatedly overwritten.

It was only few years, later RFC 3253 added versioning concepts to WebDAV, placing ‘V’ back in DAV, hence the term DeltaV. WebDAV/DeltaV clients and servers are often called just “DeltaV” programs, since DeltaV implies the existence of basic WebDAV.

Original WebDAV standard has been widely successful. Every modern computer operating system has a general WebDAV client built-in, and a number of popular standalone applications are also able to speak WebDAV — Microsoft Office, Dreamweaver, and Photoshop to name a few. On the server end, the Apache webserver has been able to provide WebDAV services since 1998 and is considered the de-facto open-source standard. There are several other commercial WebDAV servers available, including Microsoft’s own IIS.

DeltaV has not been so successful; it’s very difficult to find any DeltaV clients or servers. The few that do exist are relatively unknown commercial products.

Subversion client is not a fully-implemented DeltaV client. It needs certain types of things from the server that DeltaV itself cannot provide, and thus is largely dependent on a number of Subversion-specific HTTP REPORT requests that only mod_dav_svn understands. And also mod_dav_svn is not a fully-realized DeltaV server. Many portions of the DeltaV specification were irrelevant to Subversion, and thus left unimplemented.

Autoversioning

Though Subversion is neither a full DeltaV client nor the Subversion server a full DeltaV server, there is silver lining known as Autoversioning.
Autoversioning is an optional feature which is defined in the DeltaV standard. A typical DeltaV server will reject a WebDAV client attempting to do PUT to a file that’s under version control. To change a version-controlled file, the server expects a series proper versioning requests: something like MKACTIVITY,CHECKOUT, PUT, CHECKIN. But if the DeltaV server supports Autoversioning, then write-requests from basic WebDAV clients are accepted. The server behaves as if the client had issued the proper series of versioning requests, performing a commit under the hood. In other words, it allows a DeltaV server to interoperate with ordinary WebDAV clients that don’t understand versioning.

To activate autoversioning, you will need to add directive known as SVNAutoversioning in Apache httpd.conf file and set it as on.

When SVNAutoversioning is on, all write request to from WebDAV clients result in automatic commits. A generic log message is auto-generated and attached to each revision.

For reference on how to set up Subversion repository as network share drive using Windows Web-folders please read Using Subversion Repository as WebShare.

References:

• Subversion Documentation
• http://www.webdav.org/