Using subversion to manage code

I have finally come to terms with the fact that I need some kind of version control for the projects I am working on and the best bet these days is Subversion (svn). I have been using svn for some time now via a GUI client (Linux: kdesvn, Windows: tortoisesvn); however, it turns out that working with svn from the command line is pretty easy and far more versatile. For a complete treatment of this subject, check out the online documentation here and an excellent cheat sheet here. What follows is a quick primer on the very basics of setting up and managing your svn repositories on a local machine or server.

For ease of use I will describe the creation of a single repository for a single project. This means a little more overhead; however, it makes the repository more portable and flexible in the long run.

1) First we set up the repository structure in a temporary folder (either on the server or locally):

$ mkdir ~/tmp
$ mkdir ~/tmp/project1
$ mkdir ~/tmp/project1/trunk
$ mkdir ~/tmp/project1/branches
$ mkdir ~/tmp/project1/tags

2) Now, make a folder to hold your repositories and create an empty repository for your project.

$ mkdir ~/svnroot
$ svnadmin create ~/svnroot/project1

3) Import the folder structure into the empty repository. After this import, the folders in tmp can be removed -- they are only there to make the creation of the folder structure easier.

$ svn import ~/tmp/project1 file:///home/myusername/svnroot/project1 -m "Initial import"

4) Finally, make your current project folder a "working copy" of the repository. Checkout the trunk (or head) of the repository to the folder where project1 currently resides (in this example, the existing project files are located at ~/working/project1).
If you created your repository on a local folder:

$ svn checkout file:///home/myusername/svnroot/project1/trunk ~/working/project1

Alternatively, if you created your repository on a remote server:

$ svn checkout svn+ssh://remote.server.name/home/myusername/svnroot/project1/trunk ~/working/project1

Because the repository is empty at this stage, all the above commands do is create a .svn folder in the ~/working/project1 directory. The following command will show that there are folders and files in the project directory that are not currently part of the repository:

$ svn st
?      somefolder
?      someotherfolder
?      somefile.txt

Now you need to add all of the files and folders in this directory to the repository. This is easily accomplished using a bit of awk code (modified from a post here):

$ svn status | grep "^\?" | awk -F "      " '{print $2}' | tr "\n" "\0" | xargs -0 svn add
$ svn st
A      somefolder
A      somefolder/file1.txt
A      somefolder/file2.txt
A      someotherfolder
A      someotherfolder/file3.txt
A      somefile.txt

Now you just need to commit these changes and your working directory is up to date:

$ svn commit -m "Adding original files to repository."

5) When you are ready to commit new changes to the repository, make sure that all new files/folders are added and all deleted files/folders are removed:

$ svn status | grep "^\?" | awk -F "      " '{print $2}' | tr "\n" "\0" | xargs -0 svn add
$ svn status | grep "^\!" | awk -F "      " '{print $2}' | tr "\n" "\0" | xargs -0 svn remove
$ svn commit -m "Some comment to remind you why you are committing changes..."

6) Finally, if for some reason you want to remove a working directory from versioning (i.e., get rid of the .svn folders that are placed in every folder subfolder), use the following:

$ cd ~/working/project1
$ rm -rf 'find . -name .svn'

Update: If your svn repository changes to a new server name, use the following syntax to update your working directory:

$ cd ~/working/project1
$svn info
[the current URL and other info are printed to the screen]
$svn switch --relocate svn+ssh://OLD.URL/path/to/svnrepo svn+ssh://NEW.URL/path/to/svnrepo .
$svn commit -m "new update"

Note: If you mis-type the old URL, "svn switch" will fail silently. So make sure to check that it has updated by using the "svn info" command.