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  19 <h1>Subversion FAQ</h1>
  20
  21
  22 <div class="h2"><!-- no 'id' or 'title' attribute for TOC -->
  23 <h2>Table of Contents</h2>
  24
  25 <h4>General questions:</h4>
  26 <ul>
  27 <li><a href="#why">Why does this project exist?</a></li>
  28 <li><a href="#collab">Is Subversion proprietary?  I heard that it
  29     belongs to CollabNet.</a></li>
  30 <li><a href="#stable">Is Subversion stable enough for me to use for my
  31     own projects?</a></li>
  32 <li><a href="#interop">What is Subversion's client/server interoperability
  33     policy?</a></li>
  34 <li><a href="#portability">What operating systems does Subversion run
  35     on?</a></li>
  36 <li><a href="#filesystem">What's all this about a new filesystem?  Is
  37     it like ext2?</a></li>
  38 <li><a href="#server-requirements">What kind of hardware do I need to run
  39     a Subversion server?</a></li>
  40 <li><a href="#apache-extension">I heard that Subversion is an Apache
  41     extension?  What does it use for servers?</a></li>
  42 <li><a href="#need-apache">Does this mean I have to set up Apache to
  43     use Subversion?</a></li>
  44 <li><a href="#multiple-apachim">I run Apache 1.x right now, and can't
  45     switch to Apache 2.0 just to serve Subversion repositories.
  46     Does that mean I can't run a Subversion server?</a></li>
  47 <li><a href="#feature-x">Why don't you do X, just like SCM system Y?</a></li>
  48 <li><a href="#globalrev">Why does the entire repository share the
  49     same revision number? I want each of my projects to have their
  50     own revision numbers.  </a></li>
  51 <li><a href="#changesets">Does Subversion have changesets?</a></li>
  52 <li><a href="#release">When's the next release?</a></li>
  53 <li><a href="#symlinks">Does Subversion support symlinks?</a></li>
  54 <li><a href="#logo">I need a high resolution version of the Subversion logo,
  55     where can I get it?</a></li>
  56 <li><a href="#more-information">I have other questions.  Where can I
  57     get more information?</a></li>
  58 <li><a href="#moderation">Why isn't my post showing up on the mailing
  59     list?</a></li>
  60 </ul>
  61
  62 <h4>How-to:</h4>
  63 <ul>
  64 <li><a href="#co-svn">How do I check out the Subversion code?</a></li>
  65 <li><a href="#repository">How do I create a repository?  How do I
  66     import data into it?</a></li>
  67 <li><a href="#cvs2svn">How do I convert an existing CVS repository
  68     into a Subversion repository?</a></li>
  69     <li><a href="#proxy">What if I'm behind a proxy?</a></li>
  70 <li><a href="#paranoid">My admins don't want me to have a HTTP server for
  71     Subversion.  What can I do if I still want remote usage?</a></li>
  72 <li><a href="#multi-proj">How do I manage several different projects
  73     under Subversion?</a></li>
  74 <li><a href="#multi-merge">How do I merge two completely separate repositories?</a></li>
  75 <li><a href="#nfs">Should I store my repository / working copy on a
  76     NFS server?</a></li>
  77 <li><a href="#bdblogs">Why is my repository taking up so much disk space?</a></li>
  78 <li><a href="#reposperms">How do I set repository permissions correctly?</a></li>
  79 <li><a href="#readonly">Why do read-only operations still need repository write access?</a></li>
  80 <li><a href="#removal">How do I completely remove a file from the repository's history?</a></li>
  81 <li><a href="#change-log-msg">How do I change the log message for a revision
  82     after it's been committed?</a></li>
  83 <li><a href="#patch">How do I submit a patch for Subversion?</a></li>
  84 <li><a href="#in-place-import">How can I do an in-place 'import'
  85     (i.e. add a tree to Subversion such that the original data becomes
  86     a working copy directly)?</a></li>
  87 <li><a href="#dumpload">What is this "dump/load cycle" people
  88     sometimes talk about when upgrading a Subversion server?</a></li>
  89 <li><a href="#sspi">How do I allow clients to authenticate against a
  90     Windows domain controller using SSPI Authentication?</a></li>
  91 <li><a href="#adm-dir">I don't like the ".svn" directory name, and
  92     prefer "SVN" or something else.  How do I change it?</a></li>
  93 <li><a href="#case-change">How do I change the case of a filename?</a></li>
  94 <li><a href="#merge-using-tags">I can't use tags to merge changes from a
  95     branch into the trunk like I used to with CVS, can I?</a></li>
  96 <li><a href="#version-value-in-source">Why doesn't the $Revision$
  97   keyword do what I want?  It expands to the file's last-changed
  98   revision, but I want something that will expand to the file's
  99   current revision.</a></li>
 100 <li><a href="#log-in-source">Does Subversion have a keyword which behaves
 101   like $Log$ in CVS?</a></li>
 102 <li><a href="#ignore-commit">I have a file in my project that every
 103 developer must change, but I don't want those local mods to ever be
 104 committed.  How can I make 'svn commit' ignore the file?</a></li>
 105 <li><a href="#ssh-auth-cache">When I access a repository using
 106 svn+ssh, my password is not cached in ~/.subversion/auth/.  How do
 107 I avoid having to type it so often?</a></li>
 108 <li><a href="#ssh-svnserve-location">My
 109 <tt>svnserve</tt> binary is in a directory that isn't on my
 110 users' default <tt>PATH</tt>s, they use svn+ssh, and I can't figure
 111 out how to modify their <tt>PATH</tt> so that they can run <tt>svnserve</tt>.</a></li>
 112 <li><a href="#ssh-authorized-keys-trick">
 113 I want to allow access via svn+ssh://, but am paranoid.  I hate the
 114 idea of giving each user a login; I would then have to worry about
 115 what they are, and are not, allowed to access on my machine.
 116 </a></li>
 117 <li><a href="#auto-props">How can I set certain properties on
 118 everything in the repository?  Also, how can I make sure that every
 119 new file coming into the repository has these properties?</a></li>
 120 <li><a href="#svn-editor">How do I handle spaces in the editor path?</a></li>
 121 <li><a href="#divining-bdb-version">How do I determine which version of
 122 Berkeley DB a repository is using?</a></li>
 123 <li><a href="#website-auto-update">I'm managing a website in my
 124 repository.  How can I make the live site automatically update after
 125 every commit?</a></li>
 126 <li><a href="#single-file-checkout">How do I check out a single
 127 file?</a></li>
 128 <li><a href="#wc-change-detection">How do I detect adds, deletes,
 129 copies and renames in a working copy after they've already
 130 happened?</a></li>
 131 <li><a href="#svnserve-win-service">How do I run svnserve as a service
 132 on Windows?</a></li>
 133 <li><a href="#bdb-fsfs-convert">How do I convert my repository from using BDB
 134 to FSFS or from FSFS to BDB?</a></li>
 135 <li><a href="#binary-files">How does Subversion handle binary files?</a></li>
 136 <li><a href="#terse-diff">How can I make <tt>svn diff</tt> show me
 137     just the names of the changed files, not their contents?</a></li>
 138 <li>
 139   <a href="#sorry-no-globbing">How can I use wildcards or globbing to move many files at once?</a>
 140 </li>
 141 <li><a href="#vendor-branch">How can I maintain a modified version  (a
 142     "vendor branch") of third-party software using Subversion?</a></li>
 143 </ul>
 144
 145 <h4>Troubleshooting:</h4>
 146 <ul>
 147 <li><a href="#stuck-bdb-repos">My repository seems to get stuck all the
 148     time, giving me errors about needing recovery (DB_RUNRECOVERY).
 149     What could be the cause?</a></li>
 150 <li><a href="#bdb-recovery">Every time I try to access
 151     my repository, the process just hangs.  Is my repository
 152     corrupt?</a></li>
 153 <li><a href="#bdb-cannot-allocate-memory">My repository keeps giving
 154     errors saying "Cannot allocate memory".  What should I do?</a></li>
 155 <li><a href="#wedged-wc">Every time I try to run a svn
 156     command, it says my working copy is locked.  Is my working copy
 157     corrupt?</a></li>
 158 <li><a href="#wc-out-of-date">I'm trying to commit, but Subversion says my
 159     working copy is out of date?</a></li>
 160 <li><a href="#obstructed-add">I've contributed a patch to a project and the patch added a new file.
 161 Now <tt>svn update</tt> does not work.</a></li>
 162 <li><a href="#unrecognized-url-error">I just built the distribution
 163     binary, and when I try to check out Subversion, I get an error
 164     about an "Unrecognized URL scheme."  What's up with that?</a></li>
 165 <li><a href="#db-recover">I'm getting errors finding or opening a repository,
 166     but I know my repository URL is correct.  What's wrong?</a></li>
 167 <li><a href="#configure-sed-error">When I run `<tt>configure</tt>', I
 168     get errors <tt>subs-1.sed&nbsp;line&nbsp;38:&nbsp;Unterminated&nbsp;`s'&nbsp;command</tt>.  What's wrong?</a></li>
 169 <li><a href="#windows-msvc-build">I'm having trouble building
 170     Subversion under Windows with MSVC++ 6.0.  What should I do?</a></li>
 171 <li><a href="#windows-drive-letter">How can I specify a Windows drive letter in
 172 a <tt>file:</tt> URL?</a></li>
 173 <li><a href="#write-over-dav">I'm having trouble doing write
 174     operations to a Subversion repository over a network.</a></li>
 175 <li><a href="#vs-asp-net">VS.NET/ASP.NET seems to have a problem with
 176     the ".svn" directory name.  What should I do?</a></li>
 177 <li><a href="#windows-xp-server">Under Windows XP, the Subversion
 178     server sometimes seems to send out corrupted data.  Can this really be
 179     happening?</a></li>
 180 <li><a href="#net-trace">What is the best method of doing a network
 181     trace of the conversation between a Subversion client and server?</a></li>
 182 <li><a href="#revert">Why does the <tt>svn revert</tt> require an
 183     explicit target?  Why is it not recursive by default?  These
 184     behaviors differ from almost all the other subcommands.</a></li>
 185 <li><a href="#db3db4">When I start Apache, mod_dav_svn complains about
 186     a "bad database version", that it found db-3.X, rather than
 187     db-4.X.</a></li>
 188 <li><a href="#redhat-db">I'm getting "Function not implemented" errors on
 189     Red Hat 9, and nothing works.  How do I fix this?</a></li>
 190 <li><a href="#no-author">Why does SVN log say "(no author)" for files
 191     committed or imported via Apache (ra_dav)?</a></li>
 192 <li><a href="#windows-access-denied">I'm getting occasional "Access Denied"
 193     errors on Windows.  They seem to happen at random.  Why?</a></li>
 194 <li><a href="#freebsd-hang">On FreeBSD, certain operations (especially
 195     svnadmin create) sometimes hang.  Why?</a></li>
 196 <li><a href="#http-301-error">I can see my repository in a web browser, but
 197     'svn checkout' gives me an error about "301 Moved Permanently".
 198     What's wrong?</a></li>
 199 <li><a href="#no-copy-history">I'm trying to look at an old version of my
 200     file, but svn says something about "path not found".  What's going
 201     on?</a></li>
 202 <li><a href="#digest-auth">Why doesn't HTTP Digest auth work?</a></li>
 203 <li><a href="#xlc-compile">Compiling with xlc on AIX, I get compilation
 204     errors.  What's wrong?</a></li>
 205 <li><a href="#nonrecursive-checkout">I checked out a directory
 206     non-recursively (with -N), and now I want to make certain
 207     subdirectories "appear".  But <tt>svn up subdir</tt> doesn't
 208     work.</a></li>
 209 <li><a href="#mod_dav_svn-win32">I am trying to use mod_dav_svn
 210     with Apache on Win32 and I'm getting an error saying that the
 211     module cannot be found, yet the mod_dav_svn.so file is right
 212     there in <tt>\Apache\modules.</tt></a></li>
 213 <li><a href="#hook-debugging">Why aren't my repository hooks working?</a></li>
 214 <li><a href="#diff-cmd">Why does my --diff-cmd complain about '-u'?
 215     I tried to override it with --extensions, but it's not working.</a></li>
 216 <li><a href="#plaintext-passwords">Ahhh!  I just discovered that my
 217     Subversion client is caching passwords in plain-text on disk!
 218     AHHH!</a></li>
 219 <li><a href="#bdb41-tabletype-bug">I'm getting the error "svn: bdb: call
 220     implies an access method which is inconsistent with previous
 221     calls". How do I fix this?</a></li>
 222 <li><a href="#hotcopy-large-repos">I can't hotbackup my repository, svnadmin
 223     fails on files larger than 2Gb!</a></li>
 224 <li><a href="#hidden-log">I cannot see the log entry for the file
 225     I just committed.  Why?</a></li>
 226 <li><a href="#bdb43-upgrade">After upgrading to Berkeley DB
 227     4.3 or later, I'm seeing repository errors.</a></li>
 228 <li><a href="#tiger-apr-0.9.6">Why do I get occasional, seemingly
 229     inconsistent errors when checking out over http:// from a repository
 230     running on MacOS X 10.4 (Tiger)?</a></li>
 231 <li><a href="#debian-libtool">I can't build Subversion from working
 232     copy source on Debian GNU/Linux; I get errors at the final link
 233     stage.  What's wrong?</a></li>
 234 <li><a href="#freebsd-listen-host">I'm using FreeBSD, and I've started
 235   svnserve, but it doesn't seem to be listening on port 3690.</a></li>
 236 <li><a href="#already-under-version-control">I can't add a directory
 237     because Subversion says it's "already under version control".</a></li>
 238 <li><a href="#slow-private-svnserve">Accessing non-public repositories
 239     via svnserve is really slow sometimes.</a></li>
 240 <li><a href="#ssl-negotiation-error">When performing Subversion
 241     operations involving a lot of data over SSL, I get the error
 242     <tt>SSL negotiation failed: SSL error: decryption failed or bad
 243     record mac</tt>.</a></li>
 244 <li><a href="#broken-subclipse">I get an error that says "This client is too
 245     old".</a></li>
 246 <li><a href="#switch-problems">Why doesn't <tt>svn switch</tt> work
 247     in some cases?</a></li>
 248 <li><a href="#long-paths">In Windows, when doing an update with the
 249     command-line client, I get an error saying "The
 250     system cannot find the path specified" and suggesting that my
 251     working copy might be corrupt.  But I can update with TortoiseSVN
 252     just fine.  What's going on?</a></li>
 253 <li><a href="#working-copy-format-change">I got an error saying "This
 254     client is too old to work with working copy '...' ".  How can I
 255     fix it without upgrading Subversion?</a></li>
 256 <li><a href="#relocation-against-local-symbol">I got an error saying
 257     "relocation R_X86_64_32 against `a local symbol' can not be used
 258     when making a shared object" when building the Neon library on 64-bit
 259     Linux.</a></li>
 260 </ul>
 261
 262 <h4>Developer questions:</h4>
 263 <ul>
 264 <li><a href="#ramdisk-tests">How do I run the regression tests in a
 265     RAM disk?</a></li>
 266 <li><a href="#dynamic-exe-debugging">How do I run a debugger on
 267     dynamic Subversion binaries without having to install
 268     them?</a></li>
 269 <li><a href="#avoiding-compiler-inlining">How do I run a debugger on
 270     Subversion binaries without compiler inlining obfuscating the
 271     source?</a></li>
 272 </ul>
 273
 274 <h4>References:</h4>
 275 <ul>
 276 <li><a href="#http-methods">What are all the HTTP methods Subversion
 277     uses?</a></li>
 278 <li><a href="#bikeshed">What's a 'bikeshed'?</a></li>
 279 <li><a href="#pronounce">How do you pronounce "Subversion"?</a></li>
 280 <li><a href="#baton">What's a 'baton'?</a></li>
 281 <li><a href="#def-wedged-repository">What do you mean when you say that
 282     repository is 'wedged'?</a></li>
 283 </ul>
 284
 285 </div>
 286
 287
 288 <hr/>
 289
 290 <div class="h2" id="general-questions" title="general-questions">
 291 <h2>General questions:</h2>
 292
 293
 294 <div class="h3" id="why" title="why">
 295 <h3>Why does this project exist?</h3>
 296
 297 <p>To take over the CVS user base.  Specifically, we're writing a new
 298 version control system that is very similar to CVS, but fixes many
 299 things that are broken.  See our front page.</p>
 300
 301 </div>
 302
 303
 304 <div class="h3" id="collab" title="collab">
 305 <h3>Is Subversion proprietary?  I heard that it
 306 belongs to CollabNet.</h3>
 307
 308 <p>No, Subversion is open source / free software.  CollabNet pays the
 309 salaries of several full-time developers, and holds the copyright on
 310 the code, but that copyright is <a
 311 href="http://subversion.tigris.org/license-1.html">an
 312 Apache/BSD-style license</a>
 313 which is fully compliant with the <a
 314 href="http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines">Debian Free
 315 Software Guidelines</a>.  In other words, you are free to download,
 316 modify, and redistribute Subversion as you please; no permission from
 317 CollabNet or anyone else is required.</p>
 318
 319 </div>
 320
 321
 322 <div class="h3" id="stable" title="stable">
 323 <h3>Is Subversion stable enough for me to use for my
 324 own projects?</h3>
 325
 326 <p>Yes, absolutely.  It's ready for prime-time production.</p>
 327
 328 <p>Subversion has been in development since 2000, and became
 329 self-hosting after one year.  A year later when we declared "alpha",
 330 Subversion was already being used by dozens of private developers and
 331 shops for real work.  After that, it was two more years of bugfixing
 332 and stabilization until we reached 1.0.  Most other projects probably
 333 would have called the product "1.0" much earlier, but we deliberately
 334 decided to delay that label as long as possible.  We were aware that
 335 many people were waiting for a 1.0 before using Subversion, and had
 336 very specific expectations about the meaning of that label. So we
 337 stuck to that same standard.</p>
 338
 339 </div>
 340
 341
 342
 343 <div class="h3" id="interop" title="interop">
 344 <h3>What is Subversion's client/server
 345     interoperability policy?</h3>
 346
 347 <p>The client and server are designed to work as long as they aren't
 348  more than one major release version apart.  For example, any 1.X
 349  client will work with a 1.Y server.  However, if the client and
 350  server versions don't match, certain features may not be available.</p>
 351
 352 <p>See the client/server interoperability policy is documented in the
 353 "Compatibility" section of the <a href="hacking.html">Hacker's Guide
 354 to Subversion</a>.</p>
 355
 356 </div>
 357
 358
 359 <div class="h3" id="portability" title="portability">
 360 <h3>What operating systems does Subversion run
 361     on?</h3>
 362
 363 <p>All modern flavors of Unix, Win32, BeOS, OS/2, MacOS X.</p>
 364
 365 <p>Subversion is written in ANSI C and uses APR, the <a
 366 href="http://apr.apache.org">Apache Portable Runtime</a> library, as a
 367 portability layer.  The Subversion client will run anywhere APR runs,
 368 which is most places.  The Subversion server (i.e., the repository
 369 side) is the same, except that it will not host a Berkeley DB repository
 370 on Win9x platforms (Win95/Win98/WinME), because Berkeley DB has
 371 shared-memory segment problems on Win9x.  FSFS repositories
 372 (introduced in version 1.1) do not have this restriction; however, due
 373 to a limitation in Win9x's file-locking support, they also don't work
 374 in Win9x.</p>
 375
 376 <p>To reiterate, the Subversion client can be run on any platform
 377 where APR runs. The Subversion server can also be run on any
 378 platform where APR runs, but cannot host a repository on
 379 Win95/Win98/WinMe.</p>
 380
 381 </div>
 382
 383
 384 <div class="h3" id="filesystem" title="filesystem">
 385 <h3>What's all this about a new filesystem?  Is
 386 it like ext2?</h3>
 387
 388 <p>No.  The "Subversion Filesystem" is not a kernel-level filesystem
 389 that one would install in an operating system.  Instead, it is
 390 Subversion's repository interface, which is a "versioned filesystem"
 391 in the sense that it stores a directory tree whose state is remembered
 392 from revision to revision.  Writing programs to access the repository
 393 is similar to writing programs that use other filesystem APIs.  The
 394 main difference is that this particular filesystem doesn't lose data
 395 when written to; old tree states can be retrieved as easily the most
 396 recent state.</p>
 397
 398 </div>
 399
 400
 401 <div class="h3" id="server-requirements" title="server-requirements">
 402 <h3>What kind of hardware do I need to run a Subversion server?</h3>
 403
 404 <p>Server requirements depend on many factors, such as number of
 405 users, frequency of commits and other server related operations,
 406 repository size, and the load generated by custom repository hooks.
 407 When using Apache, it is likely that Apache itself will be the biggest
 408 factor in memory usage.  See
 409 <a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/BrowseList?list=users&amp;by=thread&amp;from=330941"
 410 >this discussion</a> on the mailing list for some concrete
 411 answers.</p>
 412
 413 <p>Remember to take in account other applications running on the same
 414 server; for example, repository browsers use resources too,
 415 independently of Subversion itself.</p>
 416
 417 <p>In general, you can expect to need much less server memory than you
 418 would for comparable CVS repositories.</p>
 419
 420 </div>
 421
 422
 423 <div class="h3" id="apache-extension" title="apache-extension">
 424 <h3>I heard that Subversion is an Apache
 425 extension?  What does it use for servers?</h3>
 426
 427 <p>No.  Subversion is a set of libraries.  It comes with a
 428 command-line client that uses them.  There are two different
 429 Subversion server processes: either <b>svnserve</b>, which is small
 430 standalone program similar to cvs pserver, or Apache <b>httpd-2.0</b>
 431 using a special <b>mod_dav_svn</b> module.  <b>svnserve</b> speaks a
 432 custom protocol, while <b>mod_dav_svn</b> uses WebDAV as its network
 433 protocol.  See <a
 434 href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/html-chunk/ch06.html">chapter 6</a>
 435 in the Subversion book to learn more.</p>
 436
 437 </div>
 438
 439
 440
 441 <div class="h3" id="need-apache" title="need-apache">
 442 <h3>Does this mean I have to set up Apache to
 443 use Subversion?</h3>
 444
 445 <p>The short answer:  no.</p>
 446
 447 <p>The long answer:  if you just want to access a repository, then you
 448  only need to build a Subversion client.  If you want to <b>host</b> a
 449  networked repository, then you need to set up either Apache2 or an
 450  "svnserve" server.</p>
 451
 452 <p>For more details about setting up a network accessible Subversion
 453 server, see <a
 454 href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/html-chunk/ch06.html">chapter 6</a>
 455 in the Subversion book.</p>
 456
 457 </div>
 458
 459
 460
 461 <div class="h3" id="multiple-apachim" title="multiple-apachim">
 462 <h3>I run Apache 1.x right now, and can't
 463 switch to Apache 2.0 just to serve Subversion repositories.
 464 Does that mean I can't run a Subversion server?</h3>
 465
 466 <p>No, you can run <b>svnserve</b> as a Subversion server.  It works
 467 extremely well.</p>
 468
 469 <p>If you want WebDAV and all the other "goodies" that come with the
 470 Apache server, then yes, you'll need Apache 2.0.  It's always an
 471 option to run Apache 2.0 on a different port while continuing to run
 472 Apache 1.x on port 80.  Different versions of Apache can happily
 473 coexist on the same machine.  Just change the <tt>Listen</tt>
 474 directive in httpd.conf from "<tt>Listen&nbsp;80</tt>" to
 475 "<tt>Listen&nbsp;8080</tt>" or whatever port number you want, and make
 476 sure to specify that port when you publish your repository URL (e.g.,
 477 <tt>http://svn.mydomain.com:8080/repos/blah/trunk/</tt>).</p>
 478
 479 </div>
 480
 481
 482 <div class="h3" id="feature-x" title="feature-x">
 483 <h3>Why don't you do X, just like SCM system Y?</h3>
 484
 485 <p>We aren't attempting to break new ground in SCM systems, nor are we
 486 attempting to imitate all the best features of every SCM system out
 487 there.  We're trying to replace CVS.  See the first question.</p>
 488
 489 </div>
 490
 491
 492 <div class="h3" id="globalrev" title="globalrev">
 493 <h3>Why does the entire repository share the
 494     same revision number? I want each of my projects to have their
 495     own revision numbers.</h3>
 496 <p>
 497 The global revision number attached to the repository as a whole is
 498 meaningless from a user's perspective. It's an internal mechanism that
 499 accomplishes the goal of the underlying schema design. It just so
 500 happens to be exposed so that the user's interface can sometimes be a
 501 little more convenient than always having to type obnoxiously long
 502 date/time strings.
 503 </p>
 504
 505 <p>
 506 The revision number is only relevant to the repository, and user
 507 convenience. It has <b>no</b> impact on any other factor of what you
 508 store in the repository.  Repository revision number bumps aren't
 509 nearly useful enough to be an accurate indication of the real rate of
 510 change of a given code base.  There are other more complicated ways to
 511 get a much better picture of a code-base's rate of change.
 512 </p>
 513
 514 </div>
 515
 516
 517 <div class="h3" id="changesets" title="changesets">
 518 <h3>Does Subversion have Changesets?</h3>
 519
 520 <p>The question is a bit loaded, because everyone seems to have a
 521 slightly different definition of "changeset", or a least a slightly
 522 different expectation of what it means for a version control system to
 523 have "changeset features".</p>
 524
 525 <p>For the purposes of this discussion, here's a simple definition of
 526 changeset: it's a collection of changes with a unique name.  The
 527 changes might include textual edits to file contents, modifications to
 528 tree structure, or tweaks to metadata.  In more common speak, a
 529 changeset is just a patch with a name you can refer to.</p>
 530
 531 <p>Subversion manages versioned trees as first order objects (the
 532 repository is an array of trees), and the changesets are things that
 533 are derived (by comparing adjacent trees.)  Systems like Arch or
 534 Bitkeeper are built the other way around: they're designed to manage
 535 changesets as first order objects (the repository is a bag of
 536 patches), and trees are derived by composing sets of patches
 537 together.</p>
 538
 539 <p>Neither philosophy is better in absolute terms: the debate goes
 540 back at least 30 years.  The two designs are better or worse for
 541 different types of software development.  We're not going to discuss
 542 that here.  Instead, here's an explanation of what you can do with
 543 Subversion.</p>
 544
 545 <p>In Subversion, a global revision number 'N' names a tree in the
 546 repository: it's the way the repository looked after the Nth commit.
 547 It's also the name of an implicit changeset: if you compare tree N
 548 with tree N-1, you can derive the exact patch that was committed.</p>
 549
 550 <p>For this reason, it's easy to think of "revision N" as not just a
 551 tree, but a changeset as well.  If you use an issue tracker to manage
 552 bugs, you can use the revision numbers to refer to particular patches
 553 that fix bugs -- for example, "this issue was fixed by revision 9238."
 554 Somebody can then run 'svn log -r9238' to read about the exact
 555 changeset which fixed the bug, and run 'svn diff -r9237:9238' to see
 556 the patch itself.  And svn's merge command also uses revision numbers.
 557 You can merge specific changesets from one branch to another by naming
 558 them in the merge arguments: 'svn merge -r9237:9238 branchURL' would
 559 merge changeset #9238 into your working copy.</p>
 560
 561 <p>This is nowhere near as complicated as a system built around
 562 changesets as primary objects, but it's still a vast convenience over
 563 CVS.</p>
 564
 565 </div>
 566
 567
 568 <div class="h3" id="release" title="release">
 569 <h3>When's the next release?</h3>
 570
 571 <p>See our status page, <a
 572 href="http://subversion.tigris.org/project_status.html">
 573 http://subversion.tigris.org/project_status.html</a>.</p>
 574
 575 </div>
 576
 577
 578 <div class="h3" id="symlinks" title="symlinks">
 579 <h3>Does Subversion support symlinks?</h3>
 580
 581 <p>Subversion 1.1 (and later) has the ability to put a symlink under
 582 version control, via the usual <tt>svn add</tt> command.</p>
 583
 584 <p>Details: the Subversion repository has no internal concept of a
 585 symlink.  It stores a "versioned symlink" as an ordinary file with an
 586 'svn:special' property attached.  The svn client (on unix) sees the
 587 property and translates the file into a symlink in the working copy.
 588 Win32 has no symlinks, so a win32 client won't do any such
 589 translation: the object appears as a normal file.</p>
 590
 591 </div>
 592
 593
 594 <div class="h3" id="logo" title="logo">
 595 <h3>I need a high resolution version of the Subversion logo,
 596     where can I get it?</h3>
 597
 598 <p>Vectorized versions of the Subversion logo are available in the <a
 599 href="http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/www">logo directory of the www
 600 tree</a> of the <a href="http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk">Subversion
 601 repository</a>.</p>
 602
 603 <p>Specifically, an <a
 604 href="http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/www/logo/subversion_logo.eps">EPS
 605 version</a>, as well as an <a
 606 href="http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/www/logo/subversion_logo.ai">Adobe
 607 Illustrator document</a> are available.</p>
 608
 609 </div>
 610
 611
 612 <div class="h3" id="more-information" title="more-information">
 613 <h3>I have other questions.  Where can I get more information?</h3>
 614
 615 <p>If you don't find an answer after browsing this FAQ, there are several
 616 other resources available:</p>
 617 <ul>
 618   <li><a href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com">The Subversion Book</a></li>
 619   <li><a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/ProjectMailingListList">The
 620        Subversion Users mailing list</a> (<a
 621        href="mailto:users@subversion.tigris.org"
 622        >users@subversion.tigris.org</a>)
 623        &mdash; note that the list is <a href="#moderation">moderated</a>, so
 624        there may be a delay before your post shows up</li>
 625   <li><a href="http://svn.haxx.se/users/">The Subversion Users list
 626        archives</a></li>
 627   <li>IRC on channel #svn on irc.freenode.net</li>
 628   <li><a href="http://www.svnforum.org/">svnforum.org</a>, an unofficial
 629   web-based forum with approximately the same target audience as the mailing
 630   list</li>
 631 </ul>
 632
 633 </div>
 634
 635
 636 <div class="h3" id="moderation" title="moderation">
 637 <h3>Why isn't my post showing up on the mailing list?</h3>
 638
 639 <p>Our mailing lists are moderated to prevent spam from getting
 640 through, so your first post to any list may be delayed, until the
 641 moderator has a chance to let it through.  Once that post is allowed
 642 through, all subsequent posts from the same address are automatically
 643 approved, so you should experience no more delay.  Of course, if your
 644 sending address changes, then you'll have to go through moderation
 645 again.</p>
 646
 647 </div>
 648
 649
 650 </div>
 651
 652 <div class="h2" id="how-to" title="how-to">
 653 <h2>How-to:</h2>
 654 <p/>
 655
 656
 657 <div class="h3" id="co-svn" title="co-svn">
 658 <h3>How do I check out the Subversion code?</h3>
 659 <p>Use the Subversion client:</p>
 660 <pre>
 661         $ svn co http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk subversion
 662 </pre>
 663 <p>That will check out a copy of the Subversion source tree into a
 664 directory named subversion on your local machine.</p>
 665
 666 </div>
 667
 668
 669 <div class="h3" id="repository" title="repository">
 670 <h3>How do I create a repository?  How do I
 671 import data into it?</h3>
 672
 673 <p>See <a
 674 href="http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/README">
 675 http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/README</a>;  specifically, look
 676 at section IV, the "Quickstart Guide".</p>
 677
 678 <p>For even more detail, read chapter 5 in <a
 679  href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com">The Subversion Book</a>.</p>
 680
 681 </div>
 682
 683
 684
 685 <div class="h3" id="cvs2svn" title="cvs2svn">
 686 <h3>How do I convert an existing CVS repository
 687     into a Subversion repository?</h3>
 688
 689 <p>Try the cvs2svn conversion tool, from <a
 690 href="http://cvs2svn.tigris.org/">http://cvs2svn.tigris.org/</a> (see
 691 also its <a href="http://cvs2svn.tigris.org/features.html" >feature
 692 list</a> and <a href="http://cvs2svn.tigris.org/cvs2svn.html"
 693 >documentation</a>).  cvs2svn seems to be what most people use, but if
 694 for some reason it doesn't meet your needs, there are at least two
 695 other tools you could try:</p>
 696
 697 <ul>
 698
 699 <li>One based on <a
 700 href="http://public.perforce.com/public/revml/index.html">VCP</a>
 701 written by Chia-liang Kao can be found on <a
 702 href="http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?VCP::Dest::svk">CPAN</a>.</li>
 703
 704 <li>refinecvs written by Lev Serebryakov is at <a
 705 href="http://lev.serebryakov.spb.ru/refinecvs/"
 706 >http://lev.serebryakov.spb.ru/refinecvs/</a>.</li>
 707
 708 </ul>
 709
 710 <p>See also the <a href="links.html">Subversion links</a>
 711 page.</p>
 712
 713 </div>
 714
 715
 716
 717 <div class="h3" id="proxy" title="proxy">
 718 <h3>What if I'm behind a proxy?</h3>
 719
 720 <p>The Subversion client can go through a proxy, if you configure it
 721 to do so.  First, edit your "servers" configuration file
 722 to indicate which proxy to use. The files location depends on your
 723 operating system. On Linux or Unix it is located in the directory
 724 "~/.subversion". On Windows it is in "%APPDATA%\Subversion". (Try
 725 "echo %APPDATA%", note this is a hidden directory.)</p>
 726
 727 <p>There are comments in the file explaining what to do.  If you don't
 728 have that file, get the latest Subversion client and run any command;
 729 this will cause the configuration directory and template files to be
 730 created.</p>
 731
 732 <p>Next, you need to make sure the proxy server itself supports all
 733 the HTTP methods Subversion uses.  Some proxy servers do not support
 734 these methods by default: PROPFIND, REPORT, MERGE, MKACTIVITY,
 735 CHECKOUT.  In general, solving this depends on the particular proxy
 736 software.  For Squid, the config option is</p>
 737
 738 <pre>
 739    #  TAG: extension_methods
 740    #       Squid only knows about standardized HTTP request methods.
 741    #       You can add up to 20 additional "extension" methods here.
 742    #
 743    #Default:
 744    # none
 745    extension_methods REPORT MERGE MKACTIVITY CHECKOUT
 746 </pre>
 747
 748 <p>(Squid 2.4 and later already knows about PROPFIND.)</p>
 749
 750 <p>See also "<a href="#http-methods">What are all the HTTP methods
 751 Subversion uses?</a>" for advice on additional HTTP methods to allow
 752 through your proxy.</p>
 753
 754 <p>If it's difficult or impossible to get the proxy to allow
 755 Subversion traffic, but you want to check out the Subversion sources,
 756 you may be able to go around the proxy.  Some proxies that filter port
 757 80 nevertheless allow anything on port 81.  For this reason, the
 758 <tt>svn.collab.net</tt> repository server listens on port 81 as well
 759 as on port 80.  Try:</p>
 760
 761 <pre>
 762    svn checkout http://svn.collab.net:81/repos/svn/trunk subversion
 763 </pre>
 764
 765 <p>and maybe the proxy will let you through.  Another strategy is to
 766 attempt the checkout over SSL, which many proxies allow:</p>
 767
 768 <pre>
 769    svn checkout https://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk subversion
 770 </pre>
 771
 772 <p>Of course, your svn client will have to have been built with ssl
 773 support; just pass <tt>--with-ssl</tt> to Subversion's
 774 <tt>./configure</tt> script.  You can check to see whether the 'https'
 775 scheme is supported by running <tt>svn --version</tt>.</p>
 776
 777 </div>
 778
 779
 780 <div class="h3" id="paranoid" title="paranoid">
 781 <h3>My admins don't want me to have a HTTP server for
 782     Subversion.  What can I do if I still want remote usage?</h3>
 783
 784 <p>A simple option is to use the <b>svnserve</b> server instead of
 785 Apache.  See <a
 786 href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/html-chunk/ch06.html">chapter 6</a>
 787 in the Subversion book for details.</p>
 788
 789 <p>However, if your admins don't want you to run Apache, it's very
 790 likely they don't want you to run a custom server process on port 3690
 791 either!  So the rest of this answer assumes that your admins
 792 <i>are</i> okay with you using an existing SSH infrastructure.</p>
 793
 794 <p>If you previously used CVS, you may have used SSH to login to the
 795 CVS server.  The ra_svn Subversion access method is the equivalent way
 796 of doing this with Subversion.  Just use the "svn+ssh" prefix to your
 797 Subversion repository URL.</p>
 798 <pre>
 799 $ svn checkout svn+ssh://your.domain.com/full/path/to/repository
 800 </pre>
 801
 802 <p>This makes your SSH program launch a private 'svnserve' process on
 803 the remote box, which accesses the repository as your UID and tunnels
 804 the information back over the encrypted link.</p>
 805
 806 <p>However, another solution that can be used instead is to leverage
 807 SSH port forwarding to connect to the protected server via ra_dav.
 808 You would connect via SSH to a machine behind your firewall that can
 809 access your Subversion server.  Note that this SSH server does
 810 <b>not</b> have to be the same as where Subversion is installed.  It
 811 can be, but it doesn't have to be.</p>
 812
 813 <p>Then, you create a local port forward that connects to the HTTP
 814 server that houses your Subversion repository.  You would then
 815 'connect' to the Subversion repository via this local port.  Then,
 816 the request will be sent 'tunneled' via SSH server to your Subversion
 817 server.</p>
 818
 819 <p>An example: a Subversion ra_dav setup is behind your company firewall
 820 at 10.1.1.50 (call it svn-server.example.com).  Your company allows SSH
 821 access via publicly accessible ssh-server.example.com. Internally, you
 822 can access the Subversion repository via
 823 http://svn-server.example.com/repos/ours.</p>
 824
 825 <p><i>Example</i>: client connecting to ssh-server with port-forwarding
 826 and checking out via the port forward</p>
 827
 828 <pre>
 829 % ssh -L 8888:svn-server.example.com:80 me@ssh-server.example.com
 830 % svn checkout http://localhost:8888/repos/ours
 831 </pre>
 832
 833 <p>Note that your svn-server.example.com could also have its httpd
 834 instance running on an unprivileged port by a non-trusted user.  This
 835 will allow your Subversion server not to require root access.</p>
 836
 837 <!-- Can you use svn switch to switch your WC between your internal and
 838      external Subversion server?  I think so.  -->
 839
 840 <p>Joe Orton notes</p>
 841 <pre>
 842 The server is sensitive to the hostname used in the Destination header
 843 in MOVE and COPY requests, so you have to be a little careful here - a
 844 "ServerAlias localhost" may be required to get this working properly.
 845 </pre>
 846
 847 <p>Some links on SSH port forwarding</p>
 848
 849 <ul>
 850 <li><a href="http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/excerpt/ssh_11/index3.html"
 851 >http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/excerpt/ssh_11/index3.html</a></li>
 852 <li><a href="http://csociety.ecn.purdue.edu/~sigos/projects/ssh/forwarding/"
 853 >http://csociety.ecn.purdue.edu/~sigos/projects/ssh/forwarding/</a></li>
 854 <li><a href="http://www.zip.com.au/~roca/ttssh.html">TTSSH: A Win32 SSH client capable of port forwarding</a></li>
 855 </ul>
 856
 857 </div>
 858
 859
 860 <div class="h3" id="multi-proj" title="multi-proj">
 861 <h3>How do I manage several different projects under Subversion?</h3>
 862
 863 <p>It depends upon the projects involved.  If the projects are
 864 related, and are likely to share data, then it's best to create one
 865 repository with several subdirectories like this:</p>
 866 <pre>
 867         $ svnadmin create /repo/svn
 868         $ svn mkdir file:///repo/svn/projA
 869         $ svn mkdir file:///repo/svn/projB
 870         $ svn mkdir file:///repo/svn/projC
 871 </pre>
 872
 873 <p>If the projects are completely unrelated, and not likely to share data
 874 between them, then it's probably best to create separate and unrelated
 875 repositories.</p>
 876 <pre>
 877         $ mkdir /repo/svn
 878         $ svnadmin create /repo/svn/projA
 879         $ svnadmin create /repo/svn/projB
 880         $ svnadmin create /repo/svn/projC
 881 </pre>
 882 <p>
 883 The difference between these two approaches is this (as explained by
 884 Ben Collins-Sussman &lt;sussman@collab.net&gt;):</p>
 885
 886 <ul>
 887   <li>
 888      In the first case, code can easily be copied or moved around
 889      between projects, and the history is preserved.  ('svn cp/mv'
 890      currently only works within a single repository.)
 891   </li>
 892   <li>
 893      Because revision numbers are repository-wide, a commit to any
 894      project in the first case causes a global revision bump.  So it
 895      might seem a bit odd if somebody has 'projB' checked out, notices
 896      that 10 revisions have happened, but projB hasn't changed at
 897      all.  Not a big deal, really.  Just a little weird at first.
 898      This used to happen to svn everytime people committed to
 899      rapidsvn, when rapidsvn was in the same repository.  :-)
 900   </li>
 901   <li>
 902      The second case might be easier to secure; it's easier to insulate
 903      projects from each other (in terms of users and permissions)
 904      using Apache's access control.  In the 1st case, you'll need a
 905      fancy hook script in the repository that distinguishes projects
 906      ("is this user allowed to commit to this particular subdir?")  Of
 907      course, we already have such a script, ready for you to use.
 908   </li>
 909 </ul>
 910
 911 </div>
 912
 913
 914 <div class="h3" id="multi-merge" title="multi-merge">
 915 <h3>How do I merge two completely separate repositories?</h3>
 916
 917 <p>If you don't care about retaining all the history of one of the
 918 repositories, you can just create a new directory under one project's
 919 repository, then import the other.</p>
 920
 921 <p>If you care about retaining the history of both, then you can use
 922 'svnadmin dump' to dump one repository, and 'svnadmin load' to load it into
 923 the other repository.  The revision numbers will be off, but you'll
 924 still have the history.</p>
 925
 926 <p>Peter Davis &lt;peter@pdavis.cx&gt; also explains a method using svn's
 927 equivalent to CVS modules:</p>
 928
 929 <blockquote>
 930         <p>As long as the merging takes place in separate directory
 931         trees, you can use svn's version of CVS modules.</p>
 932
 933         <p>Set the <em>svn:externals</em> property on a directory to checkout
 934         directories from other repositories whenever the original
 935         directory is checked out.  The repository remains separate,
 936         but in the working copy it appears that they have been merged.
 937         If you commit to the imported directory, it will affect the
 938         external repository.</p>
 939
 940         <p>The merge isn't completely clean: the import only affects
 941         working copies, so you won't be able to use a URL in the first
 942         repository to access modules imported from the second.  They
 943         remain separate URLs.</p>
 944 </blockquote>
 945
 946 <p>See also <a href="links.html#misc_utils">miscellaneous utilities</a>
 947 for helpful tools to select and reorder revisions when merging
 948 several repositories, especially the
 949 <a href="http://www.coelho.net/svn-merge-repos.html">svn-merge-repos.pl</a>
 950 perl script for basic operations and the
 951 <a href="http://svn.borg.ch/svndumptool/">SvnDumpTool</a> python classes
 952 for advanced reorganisations.</p>
 953 </div>
 954
 955
 956
 957 <div class="h3" id="nfs" title="nfs">
 958 <h3>Should I store my repository / working copy on a NFS
 959 server?</h3>
 960
 961 <p>If you are using a repository with the Berkeley DB back end
 962 (default for repositories created with Subversion 1.0 and 1.1, not the
 963 default thereafter), we recommend <i>not</i> storing the repository on
 964 a remote filesystem (for example, NFS).  While Berkeley DB databases
 965 and log files can be stored on remote filesystems, the Berkeley DB
 966 shared region files cannot be stored on a remote filesystem, so the
 967 repository may be safely accessed by only a single filesystem client,
 968 and not all Subversion functionality will be available to even that
 969 one client.</p>
 970
 971 <p>If you are using the <a
 972 href="http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/notes/fsfs">FSFS</a>
 973 repository back end, then storing the repository on a modern NFS
 974 server (i.e., one that supports locking) should be fine.</p>
 975
 976 <p>Working copies can be stored on NFS (one common scenario is when
 977 your home directory is on a NFS server).  On Linux NFS servers, due to
 978 the volume of renames used internally in Subversion when checking out
 979 files, some users have reported that 'subtree checking' should be
 980 disabled (it's enabled by default).  Please see <a
 981 href="http://nfs.sourceforge.net/nfs-howto/server.html" >NFS Howto
 982 Server Guide</a> and <b>exports(5)</b> for more information on how to
 983 disable subtree checking.</p>
 984
 985 <p>We've had at least one report of working copies getting wedged
 986 after being accessed via SMB.  The server in question was running a
 987 rather old version of Samba (2.2.7a).  The problem didn't recur with a
 988 newer Samba (3.0.6).</p>
 989
 990 </div>
 991
 992
 993 <div class="h3" id="bdblogs" title="bdblogs">
 994 <h3>Why is my repository taking up so much disk space?</h3>
 995
 996 <p>The repository stores all your data in a Berkeley DB "environment"
 997 in the repos/db/ subdirectory.  The environment contains a collection
 998 of tables and bunch of logfiles (log.*).  Berkeley DB journals all
 999 changes made to the tables, so that the tables can be recovered to a
1000 consistent state in case of interruptions (<a
1001 href="#bdb-recovery">more info</a>).</p>
1002
1003 <p>The logfiles will grow forever, eating up disk space, unless you,
1004 (as the repository administrator) do something about it.  At any given
1005 moment, Berkeley DB is only using a few logfiles actively (see <a
1006 href="http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=users&amp;msgNo=15194"
1007 >this post</a> and its associated thread); the rest can be safely
1008 deleted.  If you keep all the logfiles around forever, then in theory
1009 Berkeley DB can replay every change to your repository from the day it
1010 was born.  But in practice, if you're making backups, it's probably
1011 not worth the cost in disk space.</p>
1012
1013 <p>Use <code>svnadmin</code> to see
1014 which log files can be deleted.  You may want a cron job to do this.</p>
1015
1016 <pre>
1017 $ svnadmin list-unused-dblogs /repos
1018 /repos/db/log.000003
1019 /repos/db/log.000004
1020 [...]
1021
1022 $ svnadmin list-unused-dblogs /repos | xargs rm
1023 # disk space reclaimed!
1024 </pre>
1025
1026 <p>You could instead use Berkeley DB's <code>db_archive</code> command:</p>
1027
1028 <pre>
1029 $ db_archive -a -h /repos/db | xargs rm
1030 # disk space reclaimed!
1031 </pre>
1032
1033 <p>See also <code>svnadmin hotcopy</code> or <code>hotbackup.py</code>.</p>
1034
1035 <p><strong>Note:</strong> If you use Berkeley DB 4.2, Subversion will
1036 create new repositories with automatic log file removal enabled. You
1037 can change this by passing the <code>--bdb-log-keep</code> option to
1038 <code>svnadmin create</code>. Refer to the section about the <a
1039 href="http://www.oracle.com/technology/documentation/berkeley-db/db/api_c/env_set_flags.html#DB_LOG_AUTOREMOVE">
1040 <code>DB_LOG_AUTOREMOVE</code></a> flag in the Berkeley DB manual.</p>
1041
1042 </div>
1043
1044
1045 <div class="h3" id="reposperms" title="reposperms">
1046 <h3>How do I set repository
1047 permissions correctly?</h3>
1048
1049 <p>Try to have as <em>few</em> users access the repository as
1050 possible.  For example, run apache or 'svnserve -d' as a specific
1051 user, and make the repository wholly owned by that user.  Don't allow
1052 any other users to access the repository via <tt>file:///</tt> urls,
1053 and be sure to run 'svnlook' and 'svnadmin' only as the user which
1054 owns the repository.</p>
1055
1056 <p>If your clients are accessing via <tt>file:///</tt> or
1057 <tt>svn+ssh://</tt>, then there's no way to avoid access by multiple
1058 users.  In that case, read <a
1059 href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/html-chunk/ch06s05.html">the last
1060 section in chapter 6</a>, and pay particular attention to the
1061 "checklist" sidebar at the bottom.  It outlines a number of steps to
1062 make this scenario safer.</p>
1063
1064 <b>Note for SELinux / Fedora Core 3+ / Red Hat Enterprise users:</b>
1065
1066 <p>In addition to regular Unix permissions, under SELinux every file,
1067 directory, process, etc. has a 'security context'.  When a process
1068 attempts to access a file, besides checking the Unix permissions the
1069 system also checks to see if the security context of the process is
1070 compatible with the security context of the file.</p>
1071
1072 <p>Fedora Core 3, among other systems, comes with SELinux installed by
1073 default, configured so that Apache runs in a fairly restricted
1074 security context.  To run Subversion under Apache, you have to set the
1075 security context of the repository to allow Apache access (or turn off
1076 the restrictions on Apache, if you think all this is overkill).  The
1077 <tt>chcon</tt> command is used to set the security context of files
1078 (similarly to how the <tt>chmod</tt> sets the traditional Unix
1079 permissions).  For example, one user had to issue this command</p>
1080
1081 <pre>   $ chcon -R -h -t httpd_sys_content_t <i>PATH_TO_REPOSITORY</i></pre>
1082
1083 <p>to set the security context to be able to successfully
1084 access the repository.</p>
1085
1086 </div>
1087
1088
1089
1090 <div class="h3" id="readonly" title="readonly">
1091 <h3>Why do read-only operations still need repository
1092 write access?</h3>
1093
1094 <p>Certain client operations are "read-only", like checkouts and
1095 updates.  From an access-control standpoint, Apache treats them as
1096 such.  But libsvn_fs (the repository filesystem API) still has to
1097 write temporary data in order to produce tree-deltas.  So the process
1098 accessing the repository always requires both read <em>and</em> write
1099 access to the Berkeley DB files in order to function.</p>
1100
1101 <p>In particular, the repository responds to many "read-only"
1102 operations by comparing two trees.  One tree is the usually the HEAD
1103 revision, and the other is often a temporary transaction-tree -- thus
1104 the need for write access.</p>
1105
1106 <p>This limitation only applies to the Berkeley DB backend; the <a
1107 href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/svnbook-1.1/ch05.html#svn-ch-5-sect-1.2.A">FSFS
1108 backend</a> does not exhibit this behaviour.</p>
1109
1110 </div>
1111
1112
1113 <div class="h3" id="removal" title="removal">
1114 <h3>
1115 How do I completely remove a file from the repository's history?
1116 </h3>
1117
1118 <p>There are special cases where you might want to destroy all
1119 evidence of a file or commit. (Perhaps somebody accidentally committed
1120 a confidential document.) This isn't so easy, because Subversion is
1121 deliberately designed to never lose information. Revisions are
1122 immutable trees which build upon one another. Removing a revision from
1123 history would cause a domino effect, creating chaos in all subsequent
1124 revisions and possibly invalidating all working copies.</p>
1125
1126 <p>The project has plans, however, to someday implement an <b>svnadmin
1127 obliterate</b> command which would accomplish the task of permanently
1128 deleting information. (See <a
1129 href="http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=516">issue
1130 516</a>.)</p>
1131
1132 <p>In the meantime, your only recourse is to <b>svnadmin dump</b> your
1133 repository, then pipe the dumpfile through <b>svndumpfilter</b>
1134 (excluding the bad path) into an <b>svnadmin load</b> command.  See <a
1135 href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/html-chunk/ch05.html">chapter 5</a>
1136 of the Subversion book for details about this.</p>
1137
1138 </div>
1139
1140
1141 <div class="h3" id="change-log-msg" title="change-log-msg">
1142 <h3>
1143 How do I change the log message for a revision after it's been committed?
1144 </h3>
1145
1146 <p>Log messages are kept in the repository as properties attached to each
1147 revision.  By default, the log message property (<em>svn:log</em>) cannot be
1148 edited once it is committed.  That is because changes to <a
1149 href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/svnbook/ch05.html#svn-ch-5-sect-1.2">revision
1150 properties</a> (of which <em>svn:log</em> is one) cause the property's
1151 previous value to be permanently discarded, and Subversion tries to prevent
1152 you from doing this accidentally.  However, there are a couple of ways to get
1153 Subversion to change a revision property.</p>
1154
1155 <p>The first way is for the repository administrator to enable revision
1156 property modifications.  This is done by creating a hook called
1157 "pre-revprop-change" (see <a
1158 href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/svnbook/ch05s02.html#svn-ch-5-sect-2.1">this
1159 section</a> in the Subversion book for more details about how to do this).
1160 The "pre-revprop-change" hook has access to the old log message before it is
1161 changed, so it can preserve it in some way (for example, by sending an email).
1162 Once revision property modifications are enabled, you can change a revision's
1163 log message by passing the --revprop switch to <b>svn propedit</b> or <b>svn
1164 propset</b>, like either one of these:</p>
1165
1166 <pre>
1167 $ svn propedit -r N --revprop svn:log URL
1168 $ svn propset -r N --revprop svn:log "new log message" URL
1169 </pre>
1170
1171 <p>where N is the revision number whose log message you wish to change, and
1172 URL is the location of the repository.  If you run this command from within a
1173 working copy, you can leave off the URL.</p>
1174
1175 <p>The second way of changing a log message is to use <b>svnadmin setlog</b>.
1176 This must be done by referring to the repository's location on the filesystem.
1177 You cannot modify a remote repository using this command.</p>
1178
1179 <pre>
1180 $ svnadmin setlog REPOS_PATH -r N FILE
1181 </pre>
1182
1183 <p>where REPOS_PATH is the repository location, N is the revision number whose
1184 log message you wish to change, and FILE is a file containing the new log
1185 message.  If the "pre-revprop-change" hook is not in place (or you want to
1186 bypass the hook script for some reason), you can also use the --bypass-hooks
1187 option.  However, if you decide to use this option, be very careful.  You may
1188 be bypassing such things as email notifications of the change, or backup
1189 systems that keep track of revision properties.</p>
1190
1191 </div>
1192
1193
1194 <div class="h3" id="patch" title="patch">
1195 <h3>How do I submit a patch for Subversion?</h3>
1196
1197 <p>FIRST, read the <a href="hacking.html">Hacker's Guide to
1198 Subversion</a>.</p>
1199
1200 <p>Once you've digested that, send a mail to the dev list with the
1201 word [PATCH] and a one-line description in the subject, and include
1202 the patch inline in your mail (unless your MUA munges it up
1203 totally). Then a committer will pick it up, apply it (making any
1204 formatting or content changes necessary), and check it in.</p>
1205
1206 <p>The basic process looks like this:</p>
1207
1208 <blockquote><pre>
1209         $ svn co http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk subversion
1210         $ cd subversion/www
1211
1212                 [ make changes to faq.html ]
1213
1214         $ svn diff faq.html &gt; /tmp/foo
1215
1216         $ Mail -s "[PATCH] FAQ updates" &lt; /tmp/foo
1217 </pre></blockquote>
1218
1219 <p>Of course, the email you send should contain a nice long
1220 explanation about what the patch does, as per the
1221 <a href="hacking.html">Hacker's Guide to Subversion</a>, but you
1222 already know that, since you read and completely understood
1223 it <em>before</em> actually hacking the code, right? :)</p>
1224
1225 </div>
1226
1227
1228 <div class="h3" id="in-place-import" title="in-place-import">
1229 <h3>How can I do an in-place 'import'
1230     (i.e. add a tree to Subversion such that the original data becomes
1231     a working copy directly)?</h3>
1232
1233 <p>Suppose, for example, that you wanted to put some of /etc under
1234 version control inside your repository:</p>
1235
1236 <pre>
1237      # svn mkdir file:///root/svn-repository/etc \
1238          -m "Make a directory in the repository to correspond to /etc"
1239      # cd /etc
1240      # svn checkout file:///root/svn-repository/etc .
1241      # svn add apache samba alsa X11
1242      # svn commit -m "Initial version of my config files"
1243 </pre>
1244
1245 <p>This takes advantage of a not-immediately-obvious feature of
1246 <tt>svn&nbsp;checkout</tt>: you can check out a directory from the repository
1247 directly into an existing directory.  Here, we first make a new empty directory
1248 in the repository, and then check it out into <tt>/etc</tt>, transforming
1249 <tt>/etc</tt> into a working copy.  Once that is done, you can use normal
1250 <tt>svn&nbsp;add</tt> commands to select files and subtrees to add to the
1251 repository.</p>
1252
1253 <p>There is an issue filed for enhancing <tt>svn&nbsp;import</tt> to
1254 be able to convert the imported tree to a working copy automatically;
1255 see <a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=1328"
1256 >issue 1328</a>.</p>
1257
1258 </div>
1259
1260
1261 <div class="h3" id="dumpload" title="dumpload">
1262 <h3>What is this "dump/load cycle" people
1263     sometimes talk about when upgrading a Subversion server?</h3>
1264
1265 <p>Subversion's repository database schema has changed occasionally
1266 during development. Old repositories, created with a pre-1.0
1267 development version of Subversion, may require the following operation
1268 when upgrading.  If a schema change happens between Subversion
1269 releases X and Y, then repository administrators upgrading to Y must
1270 do the following: </p>
1271
1272 <ol>
1273  <li>Shut down svnserve, Apache, and anything else that might be
1274      accessing the repository.
1275  </li>
1276
1277  <li>
1278  <b>
1279  <tt>svnadmin&nbsp;dump&nbsp;/path/to/repository&nbsp;>&nbsp;dumpfile.txt</tt>
1280  </b>,
1281    using version X of svnadmin.
1282  </li>
1283
1284  <li>
1285  <b>
1286  <tt>mv&nbsp;/path/to/repository&nbsp;/path/to/saved-old-repository</tt>
1287  </b>
1288  </li>
1289
1290  <li>Now upgrade to Subversion Y (i.e., build and install Y, replacing X).
1291  </li>
1292
1293  <li>
1294  <b><tt>svnadmin&nbsp;create&nbsp;/path/to/repository</tt></b>, using version
1295    Y of svnadmin.
1296  </li>
1297
1298  <li>
1299  <b>
1300  <tt>svnadmin&nbsp;load&nbsp;/path/to/repository&nbsp;&lt;&nbsp;dumpfile.txt</tt>
1301  </b>,
1302    again using version Y of svnadmin.
1303  </li>
1304
1305  <li>Copy over hook scripts, etc, from the old repository to the new one.
1306  </li>
1307
1308  <li>Restart svnserve, Apache, etc.
1309  </li>
1310 </ol>
1311
1312 <p> See
1313 <a href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/html-chunk/ch05s03.html#svn-ch-5-sect-3.4"
1314 >http://svnbook.red-bean.com/html-chunk/ch05s03.html#svn-ch-5-sect-3.4</a>
1315 for more details on dumping and loading.</p>
1316
1317 <p> <b>Note</b>: Most upgrades of Subversion do <i>not</i> involve a
1318 dump and load.  When one is required, the release announcement and the
1319 CHANGES file for the new version will carry prominent notices about
1320 it.  If you don't see such a notice, then there has been no schema
1321 change, and no dump/load is necessary. </p>
1322
1323 </div>
1324
1325
1326 <div class="h3" id="sspi" title="sspi">
1327 <h3>How do I allow clients to authenticate against a
1328     Windows domain controller using SSPI authentication?</h3>
1329
1330 <p><a href="http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org">TortoiseSVN</a> has an excellent
1331 document that describes setting up a Subversion server on Windows. Go to
1332 <a href="http://tortoisesvn.net/docs/release/TortoiseSVN_en/tsvn-serversetup.html#tsvn-serversetup-apache-5"
1333 >http://tortoisesvn.net/docs/release/TortoiseSVN_en/tsvn-serversetup.html#tsvn-serversetup-apache-5</a>,
1334 to see the section on SSPI authentication.</p>
1335
1336 <p>An important part of the configuration is the line:</p>
1337 <pre>
1338    SSPIOfferBasic On
1339 </pre>
1340
1341 <p>Without this line, browsers that support SSPI will prompt for the user's
1342 credentials, but clients that do not suppport SSPI such as Subversion
1343 will not prompt. (The current release of Neon - Subversion's HTTP
1344 library - handles only basic authentication.)  Because the client never
1345 asks for credentials, any action that requires authentication will fail.
1346 Adding this line tells <tt>mod_auth_sspi</tt> to use basic authentication with
1347 the client, but to use the Windows domain controller to authenticate
1348 the credentials.</p>
1349
1350 </div>
1351
1352
1353 <div class="h3" id="adm-dir" title="adm-dir">
1354 <h3>I don't like the ".svn" directory name, and
1355     prefer "SVN" or something else.  How do I change it?</h3>
1356
1357 <p>We recommend that you live with ".svn" if you possibly can.
1358 However, if you are using ASP.NET under Windows, you might need to set
1359 the environment variable SVN_ASP_DOT_NET_HACK, as
1360 described <a href="#vs-asp-net">here</a>.</p>
1361
1362 <p>Or you could use a completely custom name for the administrative
1363 directory.  We recommend against this, because your working copy would
1364 probably not work with Subversion clients other than the one you
1365 customized.  However, if you absolutely must do this, just change this
1366 line in <tt>subversion/include/svn_wc.h</tt> from</p>
1367
1368 <pre>
1369 #define SVN_WC_ADM_DIR_NAME   ".svn"
1370 </pre>
1371
1372 <p>
1373 to (for example)
1374 </p>
1375
1376 <pre>
1377 #define SVN_WC_ADM_DIR_NAME   "SVN"
1378 </pre>
1379
1380 <p>
1381 then recompile your client.
1382 </p>
1383
1384 </div>
1385
1386
1387 <div class="h3" id="case-change" title="case-change">
1388 <h3>How do I change the case of a filename?</h3>
1389
1390 <p>This problem comes up in two situations.  If you're adding files on
1391 an operating system with a case-insensitive filesystem, such as
1392 Windows, you might find you accidentally add a file with the wrong
1393 case in the filename.  Alternatively, you may just decide to change
1394 the case of an existing file in the repository.</p>
1395
1396 <p>If you're working in a case-sensitive file system, this is no
1397 problem at all.  Just move the file to the new name, e.g.,</p>
1398
1399 <pre>
1400 svn&nbsp;mv&nbsp;file.java&nbsp;File.java
1401 </pre>
1402
1403 <p>But this won't work in a case-insensitive operating system like
1404 Windows.  In Windows you can accomplish this by copying the file
1405 somewhere temporary, deleting the file from Subversion, then adding
1406 the copy with the correct case.  Or a better way is to perform a move
1407 operation with Subversion URLs.  Using URLs is recommended, because it
1408 will preserve history for the file, and will take effect
1409 immediately.</p>
1410
1411 <p>Both ways will leave Windows working copies with problems, however,
1412 because Windows can still get confused when trying to update the
1413 conflicting filenames.  (You'll get a message like <tt>svn: Failed to
1414 add file 'File.java': object of the same name already
1415 exists</tt>). One way of fixing the problem is to delete your working
1416 copy and check out again.  If you do not want to do this, you must
1417 perform a two step update.</p>
1418
1419 <p>For each file with the wrong case, the following command will change
1420 the case:</p>
1421
1422 <pre>
1423 svn mv svn://svnserver/path/to/file.java svn://svnserver/path/to/File.java
1424 </pre>
1425
1426 <p>To update the working copy, change to the relevant directory and do:</p>
1427
1428 <pre>
1429 svn update file.java
1430 svn update
1431 </pre>
1432
1433 <p>The first update will remove <tt>file.java</tt> from your working
1434 copy, the second update will add <tt>File.java</tt>, leaving you with
1435 a correct working copy.  Or if you had a lot of problematic files, you
1436 can update the working copy this way:</p>
1437
1438 <pre>
1439 svn update *
1440 svn update
1441 </pre>
1442
1443 <p>As you can see, adding a file with the wrong case is tricky to fix on
1444 an operating system that has a case insensitive filesystem.  Do try to
1445 get it right when you add the file the first time!  To prevent the
1446 problem from occurring in the first place, you can create a pre-commit hook that
1447 calls the file <tt>check-case-insensitive.pl</tt>.  That file lives
1448 in the Subversion
1449 source tarball, in the directory <tt>contrib/hook-scripts</tt>.</p>
1450
1451 </div>
1452
1453
1454 <div class="h3" id="merge-using-tags" title="merge-using-tags">
1455 <h3>I can't use tags to merge changes from a
1456     branch into the trunk like I used to with CVS, can I?</h3>
1457
1458 <p>As shown below it is possible to merge from a branch to the trunk
1459 without remembering one revision number. Or vice versa (not shown in the
1460 example).</p>
1461
1462 <p>The example below presumes an existing repository in <tt>/home/repos</tt>
1463 in which you want to start a branch named <tt>bar</tt> containing a file
1464 named <tt>foo</tt> you are going to edit.</p>
1465
1466 <p>For the purpose of tracing branch merges, this repository has set up
1467 <tt>tags/branch_traces/</tt> to keep tags.</p>
1468
1469 <pre># setup branch and tags
1470 $ svn copy file:///home/repos/trunk \
1471            file:///home/repos/branches/bar_branch \
1472            -m "start of bar branch"
1473 $ svn copy file:///home/repos/branches/bar_branch \
1474            file:///home/repos/tags/branch_traces/bar_last_merge \
1475            -m "start"
1476
1477 # checkout branch working copy
1478 $ svn checkout file:///home/repos/branches/bar_branch wc
1479 $ cd wc
1480
1481 # edit foo.txt file and commit
1482 $ echo "some text" &gt;&gt;foo.txt
1483 $ svn commit -m "edited foo"
1484
1485 # switch to trunk and merge changes from branch
1486 $ svn switch file:///home/repos/trunk
1487 $ svn merge file:///home/repos/tags/branch_traces/bar_last_merge \
1488             file:///home/repos/branches/bar_branch
1489
1490 # Now check the file content of 'foo.txt', it should contain the changes.
1491
1492 # commit the merge
1493 $ svn commit -m "Merge change X from bar_branch."
1494
1495 # finally, update the trace branch to reflect the new state of things
1496 $ svn delete -m "Remove old trace branch in preparation for refresh." \
1497              file:///home/repos/tags/branch_traces/bar_last_merge
1498 $ svn copy file:///home/repos/branches/bar_branch                     \
1499            file:///home/repos/tags/branch_traces/bar_last_merge       \
1500            -m "Reflect merge of change X."
1501 </pre>
1502
1503 </div>
1504
1505
1506 <div class="h3" id="version-value-in-source" title="version-value-in-source">
1507 <h3>Why doesn't the $Revision$
1508 keyword do what I want?  It expands to the file's last-changed revision,
1509 but I want something that will expand to the file's current revision.</h3>
1510
1511 <p>
1512 Subversion increments the revision number of the repository as a
1513 whole, so it can't expand any keyword to be that number - it would
1514 have to search and possibly modify every file in your working copy on
1515 every update and commit.
1516 </p>
1517
1518 <p>
1519 The information you want (the revision of your working copy) is
1520 available from the command <tt>svnversion</tt>; it gives you
1521 information on the revision level of a working copy given a path (see
1522 <tt>svnversion --help</tt> for details).
1523 </p>
1524
1525 <p>
1526 You can incorporate it into your build or release process to get the
1527 information you need into the source itself.  For example, in a build
1528 environment based on <tt>GNU&nbsp;make</tt>, add <a
1529 href="http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&amp;msgNo=112564"
1530 >something like this</a> to your <tt>Makefile</tt>:
1531 </p>
1532
1533 <pre>
1534 ##
1535 ## To use this, in yourfile.c do something like this:
1536 ## printf("this program was compiled from SVN revision %s\n",SVN_REV);
1537 ##
1538
1539 SVNDEF := -D'SVN_REV="$(shell svnversion -n .)"'
1540 CFLAGS := $(SVNDEF) ... continue with your other flags ...
1541 </pre>
1542
1543 <p>
1544 (Note that this will not work on non-GNU versions of <tt>make</tt>.
1545 Don't use it if your build process needs to be portable.)</p>
1546
1547 <p>Or try this recipe:</p>
1548
1549 <pre>
1550 ##
1551 ## on every build, record the working copy revision string
1552 ##
1553 svn_version.c: FORCE
1554     echo -n 'const char* svn_version(void) { const char* SVN_Version = "' \
1555                                        &gt; svn_version.c
1556     svnversion -n .                   &gt;&gt; svn_version.c
1557     echo '"; return SVN_Version; }'   &gt;&gt; svn_version.c
1558
1559 ##
1560 ## Then any executable that links in <tt>svn_version.o</tt> will be able
1561 ## to call the function <tt>svn_version()</tt> to get a string that
1562 ## describes exactly what revision was built.
1563 ##
1564 </pre>
1565
1566 <p>
1567 Windows users may want to use <tt>SubWCRev.exe</tt>, available from
1568 the <a
1569 href='http://tortoisesvn.net/downloads'>TortoiseSVN
1570 download page</a>; it replaces all <tt>$WCREV$</tt> tags in a given
1571 file with the current working copy revision.
1572 </p>
1573
1574 </div>
1575
1576
1577 <div class="h3" id="log-in-source" title="log-in-source">
1578 <h3>Does Subversion have a keyword which
1579 behaves like $Log$ in CVS?</h3>
1580
1581 <p>No.  There is no equivalent for the $Log$ keyword in CVS.  If you
1582 want to retrieve a log for a specific file, you can run
1583 'svn log your-file-name' or 'svn log url-to-your-file'.
1584 From the mailing list some explanations why $Log$ is bad:</p>
1585
1586 <pre>"$Log$ is a total horror the moment you start merging changes
1587 between branches. You're practically guaranteed to get conflicts there,
1588 which -- because of the nature of this keyword -- simply cannot be
1589 resolved automatically."</pre>
1590
1591 <p>And:</p>
1592
1593 <pre>Subversion log messages are mutable, they can be changed by setting
1594 the svn:log revision property. So the expansion of $Log:$ in any
1595 given file could be out of date. Update may well need to retrieve the
1596 appropriate log message for each occurrence of the $Log:$ keyword,
1597 even if the file that contained it was not otherwise updated.</pre>
1598
1599 <p><i>I don't care about that.  I want to use it anyway.
1600 Will you implement it?</i></p>
1601
1602 <p>No.  There are no plans to implement it ourselves or accept patches
1603 which implement this feature.  If you want to distribute your files
1604 with some kind of changelog included, you might be able to work
1605 around this limitation in your build system.</p>
1606
1607 </div>
1608
1609
1610
1611 <div class="h3" id="ignore-commit" title="ignore-commit">
1612 <h3>I have a file in my project that every
1613 developer must change, but I don't want those local mods to ever be
1614 committed.  How can I make 'svn commit' ignore the file?</h3>
1615
1616 <p>The answer is: don't put that file under version control.  Instead,
1617 put a <em>template</em> of the file under version control, something
1618 like "file.tmpl".</p>
1619
1620 <p>Then, after the initial 'svn checkout', have your users (or your
1621 build system) do a normal OS copy of the template to the proper
1622 filename, and have users customize the copy.  The file is unversioned,
1623 so it will never be committed.  And if you wish, you can add the file
1624 to its parent directory's svn:ignore property, so it doesn't show up
1625 as '?'  in the 'svn status' command.</p>
1626
1627 </div>
1628
1629
1630 <div class="h3" id="ssh-auth-cache" title="ssh-auth-cache">
1631 <h3>When I access a repository using
1632 svn+ssh, my password is not cached in ~/.subversion/auth/.  How do
1633 I avoid having to type it so often?</h3>
1634
1635 <p>ssh has its own passphrases and its own authentication-caching
1636 scheme.  Its auth caching is external to Subversion, and must be set
1637 up independently of Subversion.</p>
1638
1639 <p>OpenSSH includes <b><tt>ssh-keygen</tt></b> to create the keys,
1640 <b><tt>ssh-agent</tt></b> to cache passphrases, and
1641 <b><tt>ssh-add</tt></b> to add passphrases to the agent's cache.  A
1642 popular script to simplify usage of <tt>ssh-agent</tt> is
1643 <b><tt>keychain</tt></b>.  On Windows, <b><tt>PuTTY</tt></b> is a
1644 popular alternative ssh client; see <b><tt>PuTTYgen</tt></b> to import
1645 OpenSSH keys and <b><tt>pageant</tt></b> to cache passphrases.</p>
1646
1647 <p>Setting up <tt>ssh-agent</tt> is outside the scope of this
1648 document, but a <a
1649 href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;lr=&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=%22ssh-agent%22"
1650 >Google search for "ssh-agent"</a> will quickly get you answers.  Or
1651 if you're <i>really</i> impatient, try one of these:</p>
1652
1653 <pre>
1654    <a href="http://mah.everybody.org/docs/ssh"
1655            >http://mah.everybody.org/docs/ssh</a>
1656    <a href="http://kimmo.suominen.com/docs/ssh/"
1657            >http://kimmo.suominen.com/docs/ssh/</a>
1658 </pre>
1659
1660 </div>
1661
1662
1663 <div class="h3" id="ssh-svnserve-location" title="ssh-svnserve-location">
1664 <h3>My
1665 <tt>svnserve</tt> binary is in a directory that isn't on my
1666 users' default <tt>PATH</tt>s, they use svn+ssh, and I can't figure
1667 out how to modify their <tt>PATH</tt> so that they can run <tt>svnserve</tt>.</h3>
1668
1669       <p>Note: this all assumes you're using OpenSSH.  There are other
1670       ssh implementations out there, and presumably they will allow
1671       you to do something similar, but we don't yet know the details.</p>
1672
1673       <p>You've tried fiddling with their various login files, like
1674         <tt>.bash_profile</tt>, and nothing works!  That's because ssh
1675         ignores those files when the Subversion client invokes it.
1676         But there's no need to modify <tt>PATH</tt>; instead, you can
1677         directly give ssh the full name of the <tt>svnserve</tt> command.
1678         Here's how to do it:</p>
1679
1680       <p>For each user who needs svn+ssh access, generate a new ssh
1681         public-key pair which they will use <em>only</em> for
1682         Subversion&mdash;not for logging in normally.  Have them give
1683         the keypair a distinctive name, like
1684         <tt>~/.ssh/id_dsa.subversion</tt>.  Add the public part of the
1685         key to their <tt>~/.ssh/authorized_keys</tt> file on the
1686         server machine, after first inserting a bit of magic at the
1687         beginning of the line before the word <tt>ssh-rsa</tt> or
1688         <tt>ssh-dss</tt>, like this:</p>
1689
1690       <table border="1" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="2">
1691         <tr><th>before</th></tr>
1692         <tr><td><tt>ssh-dss&nbsp;AAAAB3Nblahblahblahblah</tt></td></tr>
1693         <tr><th>after</th></tr>
1694         <tr><td><tt>
1695         command="/opt/subversion/bin/svnserve&nbsp;-t"&nbsp;ssh-dss&nbsp;AAAAB3Nblahblahblahblah
1696         </tt></td></tr>
1697       </table>
1698
1699       <p>Obviously, replace <tt>/opt/subversion/bin/svnserve</tt> with
1700       whatever is appropriate for your system.  You also might want to
1701       specify the full path to the Subversion repository in the
1702       command (by using the <tt>-r</tt> option), to save your users
1703       some typing.</p>
1704
1705       <p>The <tt>command=</tt> magic causes sshd on the remote machine
1706         to invoke <tt>svnserve</tt>, even if your user tries to run
1707         some other command.  See the sshd(8) man page (section
1708         <tt>AUTHORIZED_KEYS FILE FORMAT</tt>) for details.</p>
1709
1710       <p>Now when your users run the Subversion client, make sure they
1711       have an <tt>SVN_SSH</tt> environment variable that "points to"
1712       the private half of their keypair, by doing something like this
1713       (for the Bourne Again shell):</p>
1714
1715 <pre>
1716 SVN_SSH="ssh -i $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa.subversion"
1717 export SVN_SSH
1718 </pre>
1719
1720       <p><a
1721       href="http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/notes/ssh-tricks">This
1722       file</a> discusses this topic in more detail.</p>
1723
1724 </div>
1725
1726
1727 <div class="h3" id="ssh-authorized-keys-trick" title="ssh-authorized-keys-trick">
1728 <h3>I want to allow access via svn+ssh://, but am paranoid.  I hate the
1729 idea of giving each user a login; I would then have to worry about
1730 what they are, and are not, allowed to access on my machine.</h3>
1731 <p>See the section about hacking
1732 the <tt>~/.ssh/authorized_keys</tt> file in the answer
1733 to <a href="#ssh-svnserve-location">this other question</a>; ignore the stuff
1734 about getting <tt>svnserve</tt> on your PATH.</p>
1735 </div>
1736
1737
1738 <div class="h3" id="auto-props" title="auto-props">
1739 <h3>How can I set certain properties on
1740 everything in the repository?  Also, how can I make sure that every
1741 new file coming into the repository has these properties?</h3>
1742
1743 <p>Subversion will not change a file's contents by default; you have
1744 to deliberately set the <tt>svn:eol-style</tt> or
1745 <tt>svn:keywords</tt> property on a file for that to happen.  That
1746 makes Subversion a lot safer than CVS's default behavior, but with
1747 that safety comes some inconvenience.</p>
1748
1749 <p>Answering the first question: to set properties on all files
1750 already in the repository, you'll need to do it the hard way.  All you
1751 can do is run <tt>svn propset</tt> on every file (in a working copy),
1752 and then <tt>svn commit</tt>.  Scripting can probably help you with
1753 this.</p>
1754
1755 <p>But what about future files?  Unfortunately, there's no server
1756 mechanism to automatically set properties on files being committed.
1757 This means that all of your users need to remember to set certain
1758 properties whenever they <tt>svn add</tt> a file.  Fortunately,
1759 there's a client-side tool to help with this.  Read about the <a
1760 href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/svnbook-1.1/ch07s02.html#svn-ch-7-sect-2.4">
1761 auto-props</a> feature in the book.  You need to make sure all your
1762 users configure their clients' auto-props settings appropriately.</p>
1763
1764 <p>You could write a pre-commit hook script to reject any commit which
1765 forgets to add properties to new files (see <a
1766 href="http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/contrib/hook-scripts/check-mime-type.pl"
1767 >http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/contrib/hook-scripts/check-mime-type.pl</a>
1768 for example).  However, this approach may be overkill.  If somebody
1769 forgets to set <tt>svn:eol-style</tt>, for example, it will be noticed
1770 the minute somebody else opens the file on a different OS.  Once
1771 noticed, it's easy to fix: just set the property and commit.</p>
1772
1773 <p>Note: many users have asked for a feature whereby the server
1774 automatically "broadcasts" run-time settings to clients, such as
1775 auto-props settings.  There's already a feature request filed for this
1776 (<a
1777 href="http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=1974">issue
1778 1974</a>), though this feature is still being debated by developers,
1779 and isn't being worked on yet.</p>
1780
1781 </div>
1782
1783
1784 <div class="h3" id="svn-editor" title="auto-props">
1785 <h3>How do I deal with spaces in the editor path?&nbsp; Also, how can
1786 I define command line options for the editor?</h3>
1787
1788 <p>The Subversion command line client will invoke the editor defined
1789 in the environment variable SVN_EDITOR.&nbsp; This environment variable
1790 is passed directly to the operating system along with the name of a
1791 temporary file used to enter/edit the log message.</p>
1792
1793 <p>Due to the fact that the SVN_EDITOR string is passed as-is to the
1794 system's command shell, spaces in the editor name, or in the path name
1795 to the editor, will not work unless the editor name is in quotes.</p>
1796
1797 <p>For example, on Windows if your editor is in
1798 <code>C:\Program&nbsp;Files\Posix&nbsp;Tools\bin\vi</code> you would
1799 want to set the variable as follows:
1800 </p>
1801 <pre>
1802    set SVN_EDITOR="C:\Program Files\Posix Tools\bin\vi"
1803 </pre>
1804
1805 <p>Note that there is no need to escape the quotes in the Windows
1806 shell as they are not part of the syntax for the <code>set</code>
1807 command.
1808 </p>
1809
1810 <p>On UNIX systems you would need to follow your shell's specific
1811 methods for setting the variable.&nbsp; For example, in a bash shell,
1812 the following should work:
1813 </p>
1814 <pre>
1815    SVN_EDITOR='"/usr/local/more editors/bin/xemacs"'
1816    export SVN_EDITOR
1817 </pre>
1818
1819 <p>In case a command line option would be needed for the invocation
1820 of the editor, just add that after the editor name in the SVN_EDITOR
1821 environment variable just like you would us on the command line.&nbsp;
1822 For example, if the options <code>-nx -r</code> would be wanted for
1823 the above editors, the following will provide those options:
1824 </p>
1825
1826 <p>For Windows:</p>
1827 <pre>
1828    set SVN_EDITOR="C:\Program Files\Posix Tools\bin\vi" -nx -r
1829 </pre>
1830
1831 <p>For UNIX/bash:</p>
1832 <pre>
1833    SVN_EDITOR='"/usr/local/more editors/bin/xemacs" -nx -r'
1834    export SVN_EDITOR
1835 </pre>
1836
1837 <p>Note that SVN_EDITOR is the Subversion specific environment variable
1838 setting for the editor selection.&nbsp; Subversion also supports
1839 using the more generic EDITOR variable but if you need special behaviors
1840 with Subversion it is best to use the SVN_EDITOR variable.
1841 </p>
1842
1843 </div>
1844
1845
1846 <div class="h3" id="divining-bdb-version" title="divining-bdb-version">
1847 <h3>How do I determine which version of
1848 Berkeley DB a repository is using?</h3>
1849
1850 <p>If it's a live repository, then the easy answer is "Whatever
1851 version of Berkeley DB you have installed".  If, however, it is a
1852 repository from a backup, or some unknown source, and you have no idea
1853 which version of Berkeley DB it was made with, here's how you find
1854 out:</p>
1855
1856 <p>Run some command to view the two 4-byte integers at offsets 12 and
1857 16 (decimal) in the highest-numbered db/log.* file in the repository.
1858 Here is an example using GNU od: "<tt>od -j12 -N8 -tx4
1859 log.<i>&lt;number&gt;</i></tt>".  Here is an example using Mac OS X
1860 hexdump: "<tt>hexdump -s12 -n8 -x log.<i>&lt;number&gt;</i></tt>".
1861 The first integer should be the magic number 0x00040988, which
1862 identifies the file as a Berkeley DB logfile.  The second number is
1863 the log format version
1864 - match it to a Berkeley DB version using the table below:</p>
1865
1866 <table border="1" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="2">
1867   <tr><th>Log format version</th><th>Berkeley DB version</th></tr>
1868   <tr><td>5 (0x00000005)</td><td>4.0</td></tr>
1869   <tr><td>7 (0x00000007)</td><td>4.1</td></tr>
1870   <tr><td>8 (0x00000008)</td><td>4.2</td></tr>
1871   <tr><td>10 (0x0000000a)</td><td>4.3</td></tr>
1872   <tr><td>11 (0x0000000b)</td><td>4.4</td></tr>
1873   <tr><td>12 (0x0000000c)</td><td>4.5</td></tr>
1874   <tr><td>13 (0x0000000d)</td><td>4.6</td></tr>
1875 </table>
1876
1877 </div>
1878
1879
1880 <div class="h3" id="website-auto-update" title="website-auto-update">
1881 <h3>I'm managing a website in my
1882 repository.  How can I make the live site automatically update after
1883 every commit?</h3>
1884
1885 <p>This is done all the time, and is easily accomplished by adding a
1886 post-commit hook script to your repository.  Read about hook scripts
1887 in <a
1888 href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.1/ch05s02.html#svn-ch-5-sect-2.1">Chapter
1889 5</a> of the book.  The basic idea is to make the "live site" just an
1890 ordinary working copy, and then have your post-commit hook script run
1891 'svn update' on it.</p>
1892
1893 <p>In practice, there are a couple of things to watch out for.  The
1894 server program performing the commit (svnserve or apache) is the same
1895 program that will be running the post-commit hook script.  That means
1896 that this program must have proper permissions to update the working
1897 copy.  In other words, the working copy must be owned by the same user
1898 that svnserve or apache runs as -- or at least the working copy must
1899 have appropriate permissions set.</p>
1900
1901 <p>If the server needs to update a working copy that it doesn't own
1902 (for example, user joe's ~/public_html/ area), one technique is create
1903 a +s binary program to run the update, since Unix won't allow scripts
1904 to run +s.  Compile a tiny C program:</p>
1905
1906 <pre>
1907 #include &lt;stddef.h&gt;
1908 #include &lt;stdlib.h&gt;
1909 #include &lt;unistd.h&gt;
1910 int main(void)
1911 {
1912   execl("/usr/local/bin/svn", "svn", "update", "/home/joe/public_html/",
1913         (const char *) NULL);
1914   return(EXIT_FAILURE);
1915 }
1916 </pre>
1917
1918 <p>... and then <tt>chmod +s</tt> the binary, and make sure it's owned
1919 by user 'joe'.  Then in the post-commit hook, add a line to run the
1920 binary.</p>
1921
1922 <p>If you have problems getting the hook to work, see <a
1923 href="#hook-debugging">"Why aren't my repository hooks
1924 working?"</a>.</p>
1925
1926 <p>Also, you'll probably want to prevent apache from exporting the
1927 .svn/ directories in the live working copy.  Add this to your
1928 <tt>httpd.conf</tt>:</p>
1929
1930 <pre>
1931 # Disallow browsing of Subversion working copy administrative dirs.
1932 &lt;DirectoryMatch "^/.*/\.svn/"&gt;
1933     Order deny,allow
1934     Deny from all
1935 &lt;/DirectoryMatch&gt;
1936 </pre>
1937
1938 </div>
1939
1940
1941 <div class="h3" id="single-file-checkout" title="single-file-checkout">
1942 <h3>How do I check out a single file?</h3>
1943
1944 <p>Subversion does not support checkout of a single file, it only
1945 supports checkout of directory structures.</p>
1946
1947 <p>However, you can use 'svn export' to export a single file.  This will
1948 retrieve the file's contents, it just won't create a versioned working
1949 copy.</p>
1950
1951 </div>
1952
1953
1954 <div class="h3" id="wc-change-detection" title="wc-change-detection">
1955 <h3>How do I detect adds, deletes,
1956 copies and renames in a working copy after they've already
1957 happened?</h3>
1958
1959 <p>You don't.  It's a bad idea to try.</p>
1960
1961 <p>The basic design of the working copy has two rules: (1) edit files
1962 as you please, and (2) use a Subversion client to make any
1963 tree-changes (add, delete, move, copy).  If these rules are followed,
1964 the client can sucessfully manage the working copy.  If renames or
1965 other rearrangements happen outside of Subversion, then the UI has
1966 been violated and the working copy might be broken.  The client cannot
1967 guess what happened.</p>
1968
1969 <p>People sometimes run into this problem because they want to make
1970 version control "transparent".  They trick users into using a working
1971 copy, then have a script run later that tries to guess what happened
1972 and run appropriate client commands.  Unfortunately, this technique
1973 only goes a short distance.  'svn status' will show missing items and
1974 unversioned items, which the script can then automatically 'svn rm' or
1975 'svn add'.  But if a move or copy has happened, you're out of luck.
1976 Even if the script has a foolproof way of detecting these things, 'svn
1977 mv' and 'svn cp' can't operate after the action has already
1978 occurred.</p>
1979
1980 <p>In summary: a working copy is wholly under Subversion's control,
1981 and Subversion wasn't designed to be transparent.  If you're looking
1982 for transparency, try setting up an apache server and using the
1983 "SVNAutoversioning" feature described in appendix C of the book.  This
1984 will allow users to mount the repository as a network disk, and any
1985 changes made to the volume cause automatic commits on the server.</p>
1986
1987 </div>
1988
1989
1990 <div class="h3" id="svnserve-win-service" title="svnserve-win-service">
1991 <h3>How do I run svnserve as a service
1992 on Windows?</h3>
1993
1994 <p>For versions 1.4.0 and later, you can find
1995 instructions <a
1996 href="http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/notes/windows-service.txt">here</a>.</p>
1997
1998 <p>In versions before 1.4.0, the <tt>svnserve</tt> binary itself could
1999 not be installed as a Windows service, but there are a number of
2000 &ldquo;service wrappers&rdquo; that can do the job; for example:</p>
2001
2002 <ul>
2003 <li><a href="http://www.clanlib.org/~mbn/svnservice/">SVNService</a>
2004 is a free tool written by Magnus Norddahl</li>
2005 <li><a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q137890/">SrvAny</a>
2006 is avaliable free of charge from Microsoft</li>
2007 </ul>
2008
2009 <p>There is a bit more about running <tt>svnserve</tt> as a service in
2010 <a
2011 href="http://tortoisesvn.net/docs/release/TortoiseSVN_en/tsvn-serversetup-svnserve.html">the
2012 TortoiseSVN manual</a>.</p>
2013
2014 </div>
2015
2016
2017 <div class="h3" id="bdb-fsfs-convert" title="bdb-fsfs-convert">
2018 <h3>How do I convert my repository from using BDB
2019 to FSFS or from FSFS to BDB?</h3>
2020
2021 <p>There are three steps:</p>
2022
2023 <ol>
2024   <li>A <a href="#dumpload">dump/load</a> from the old format to the new
2025   one.</li>
2026   <li>Copy the hook scripts.</li>
2027   <li>Copy the configuration files.</li>
2028 </ol>
2029
2030 <p>Say you have a repository <tt>/svn/myrepos</tt> which is using the BDB
2031 backend and you would like to switch to using the FSFS backend:</p>
2032
2033 <ol>
2034   <li>Close down your server so that the data cannot change during this
2035   procedure.</li>
2036   <li>Make a new repository specifying the fsfs backend (it is the default
2037   from 1.2 onwards), e.g., <tt>svnadmin create /svn/myreposfsfs --fs-type
2038   fsfs</tt>.</li>
2039   <li>Pipe the output of a dump from <tt>/svn/myrepos</tt> to the input of a
2040   load into <tt>/svn/myreposfsfs</tt>, e.g., <tt>svnadmin dump /svn/myrepos
2041   -q | svnadmin load /svn/myreposfsfs</tt>.  Windows users should dump
2042   to a file and load from that file in two separate steps.</li>
2043   <li>Copy any hook scripts which are active in <tt>/svn/myrepos/hooks</tt>
2044   into <tt>/svn/myreposfsfs/hooks</tt>.  Don't mindlessly copy everything, the
2045   templates generated by Subversion may have changed.</li>
2046   <li>Compare the template scripts which the <tt>svnadmin create</tt> command
2047   put in <tt>/svn/myreposfsfs/hooks</tt> with those in
2048   <tt>/svn/myrepos/hooks</tt> and incorporate any changes which you would like
2049   into your active hook scripts.</li>
2050   <li>Copy configuration files from <tt>/svn/myrepos/conf</tt>
2051   into <tt>/svn/myreposfsfs/conf</tt> (and don't forget a password
2052   file, if you use one).  Or you might instead want to merge
2053   the <em>changes</em> that you made to your configuration files into
2054   the new default ones.</li>
2055   <li>Rename <tt>/svn/myrepos</tt> to <tt>/svn/myreposbdb</tt> and then
2056   <tt>/svn/myreposfsfs</tt> to <tt>/svn/myrepos</tt> ensuring that the
2057   file permissions are the same as those  that the BDB version had.</li>
2058   <li>Restart the server.</li>
2059 </ol>
2060
2061 <p>Once you are happy that all is well with your new repository delete the old
2062 one.</p>
2063
2064 <p>To do the reverse and migrate from FSFS to BDB change the <tt>svnadmin
2065 create</tt> command to specify BDB.</p>
2066
2067 </div>
2068
2069 <div class="h3" id="binary-files" title="binary-files">
2070 <h3>How does Subversion handle binary files?</h3>
2071
2072 <p>When you first add or import a file into Subversion, the file is
2073 examined to determine if it is a binary file.  Currently, Subversion
2074 just looks at the first 1024 bytes of the file; if any of the bytes
2075 are zero, or if more than 15% are not ASCII printing characters, then
2076 Subversion calls the file binary.  This heuristic might be improved in
2077 the future, however.</p>
2078
2079 <p>If Subversion determines that the file is binary, the file receives
2080 an svn:mime-type property set to "application/octet-stream".  (You can
2081 always override this by using the <a
2082 href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/svnbook-1.1/ch07s02.html#svn-ch-7-sect-2.4"
2083 >auto-props feature</a> or by setting the property manually with
2084 <tt>svn propset</tt>.)</p>
2085
2086 <p>Subversion treats the following files as text:</p>
2087
2088 <ul>
2089   <li>Files with no svn:mime-type</li>
2090   <li>Files with a svn:mime-type starting "text/"</li>
2091   <li>Files with a svn:mime-type equal to "image/x-xbitmap"</li>
2092   <li>Files with a svn:mime-type equal to "image/x-xpixmap"</li>
2093 </ul>
2094
2095 <p>All other files are treated as binary, meaning that Subversion will:</p>
2096
2097 <ul>
2098   <li>Not attempt to automatically merge received changes with local
2099       changes during <tt>svn update</tt> or <tt>svn merge</tt></li>
2100   <li>Not show the differences as part of <tt>svn diff</tt></li>
2101   <li>Not show line-by-line attribution for <tt>svn blame</tt></li>
2102 </ul>
2103
2104 <p>In all other respects, Subversion treats binary files the same as
2105 text files, e.g. if you set the svn:keywords or svn:eol-style
2106 properties, Subversion will perform keyword substitution or newline
2107 conversion on binary files.</p>
2108
2109 <p>Note that whether or not a file is binary does not affect the
2110 amount of repository space used to store changes to that file, nor
2111 does it affect the amount of traffic between client and server.  For
2112 storage and transmission purposes, Subversion uses a diffing method
2113 that works equally well on binary and text files; this is completely
2114 unrelated to the diffing method used by the 'svn&nbsp;diff'
2115 command.</p>
2116
2117 </div>
2118
2119 <div class="h3" id="terse-diff" title="terse-diff">
2120 <h3>How can I make <tt>svn diff</tt> show me just the names of the
2121 changed files, not their contents?</h3>
2122 <p>
2123 <tt>svn diff</tt> doesn't have an option to do this, but
2124 </p>
2125 <ul>
2126 <li>
2127   If you only are interested in the diffs between, say, revision 10
2128   and the revision just before it, <pre>svn log -vq -r10</pre> does
2129   exactly what you want;
2130 </li>
2131 <li>
2132   otherwise, if you're using Unix, this works for any range of revisions:
2133   <pre>
2134     svn log -vq -r123:456 | egrep '^ {3}[ADMR] ' | cut -c6- | sort | uniq </pre> </li>
2135 </ul>
2136 Version 1.4 of the <tt>svn diff</tt> command will have a "--summarize"
2137 option.
2138 </div>
2139
2140 <div class="h3" id="sorry-no-globbing" title="sorry-no-globbing">
2141 <h3>How can I use wildcards or globbing to move many files at once?</h3>
2142 <p>
2143 You want to do something like
2144 </p>
2145 <pre>
2146 svn mv svn://server/trunk/stuff/* svn://server/trunk/some-other-dir
2147 </pre>
2148 <p>
2149 but it fails with
2150 </p>
2151 <pre>
2152 svn: Path 'svn://server/trunk/stuff/*' does not exist in revision 123
2153 </pre>
2154 <p>
2155 ... or some other inscrutable error message.
2156 </p>
2157
2158 <p>
2159 The short, unhappy answer is: there's no built-in way to do this; many
2160 commands, like <tt>mv</tt>, refuse to take an arbitrary number of
2161 arguments ... and in any case, Subversion doesn't expand wildcards like
2162 "*" the way the shell does.
2163 </p>
2164
2165 <p>
2166 If you happen to have a working copy that contains all the source
2167 files as well as the destination directory, then you can exploit your
2168 shell's wildcard feature to do the move, like this (for Bash):
2169 </p>
2170 <pre>
2171   for i in stuff/*; do svn mv $i some-other-dir; done
2172   svn ci -m "moved all the stuff into some other dir"
2173 </pre>
2174
2175 <p>
2176 In any case, you can always accumulate a list of the names of the
2177 source files, and then run "svn mv" on each item in that list, like
2178 this:
2179 </p>
2180 <pre>
2181         s=svn://server/trunk/stuff/
2182         svn ls "$s"  | \
2183         while read f
2184            do svn mv "$s/$f" svn://server/trunk/some-other-dir -m "Moved just one file"
2185         done
2186 </pre>
2187 <p>
2188 Note, however, that this will generate one commit per source file;
2189 that's in contrast to the above method (using a working copy) which
2190 generates just one commit total.
2191 </p>
2192
2193 <p>
2194 There is a program called "svnmucc" or "mucc" depending upon which
2195 version of Subversion you have, whose source is distributed with
2196 Subversion (in ...<tt>/contrib/client-side/mucc/mucc.c</tt> for
2197 Subversion 1.4 or earlier, in
2198 ...<tt>/contrib/client-side/svnmucc/svnmucc.c</tt> for Subversion 1.5
2199 or later), that appears to solve this problem for you.
2200 </p>
2201
2202 <p>
2203 Rumor has it that with release 1.5, Subversion will in fact allow you
2204 to "cp" and "mv" multiple files at once.
2205 </p>
2206 </div>
2207
2208 <div class="h3" id="vendor-branch" title="vendor-branch">
2209 <h3>How can I maintain a modified version (a "vendor branch") of
2210 third-party software using Subversion?</h3>
2211
2212 <p>People frequently want to use Subversion to track their local
2213 changes to third-party code, even across upgrades from the
2214 third-party&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;that is, they want to maintain their own
2215 divergent branch, while still incorporating new releases from the
2216 upstream source.  This is commonly called a <em>vendor branch</em>
2217 (the term long predates Subversion), and the techniques for
2218 maintaining one in Subversion are <a
2219 href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.4/svn-book.html#svn.advanced.vendorbr"
2220 >described here</a>.</p>
2221
2222 <p>If the vendor code is hosted in a remote Subversion repository,
2223 then you can use <a href="http://piston.rubyforge.org/">Piston</a> to
2224 manage your copy of the vendor's code.</p>
2225
2226 <p>As a last resort, if using <tt>svn_load_dirs.pl</tt> is taking too
2227 much time or you're looking for the lazy solution, see also Jon
2228 Stevens' step-by-step explanation at <a
2229 href="http://lookfirst.com/2007/11/subversion-vendor-branches-howto.html"
2230 >Subversion Vendor Branches Howto</a>.  This solution does not make
2231 use of the space saving features in the Subversion backend when you
2232 copy new code over old code; in this solution, each import of a vendor
2233 code gets an entire new copy and there is no space savings for
2234 identical files.</p>
2235
2236 </div>
2237
2238 </div>
2239
2240 <div class="h2" id="troubleshooting" title="troubleshooting">
2241 <h2>Troubleshooting:</h2>
2242 <p/>
2243
2244
2245 <div id="permissions"></div>
2246 <div class="h3" id="stuck-bdb-repos" title="stuck-bdb-repos">
2247 <h3>My repository seems to get stuck all the
2248 time, giving me errors about needing recovery (DB_RUNRECOVERY). What
2249 could be the cause?</h3>
2250
2251 <p>The Berkeley DB database in your repository is sensitive to
2252 interruptions.  If a process accessing the database exits without
2253 "cleanly" closing the environment, then the database is left in an
2254 inconsistent state.  Common causes of this include:</p>
2255
2256 <ul>
2257   <li>the process exiting when it hits a permission problem</li>
2258   <li>the process crashing/segfaulting</li>
2259   <li>the process being forcibly killed</li>
2260   <li>running out of disk space</li>
2261 </ul>
2262
2263 <p>For most of these cases, you should run "svnadmin recover", which
2264 rewinds the repository back to a consistent state; see <a
2265 href="#bdb-recovery">this question</a> for details.  Note that running
2266 out of disk space, combined with frequent checkouts or updates, can
2267 cause the repository to crash in a way where recovery is not possible
2268 (so keep backups).</p>
2269
2270 <p>Segfaults, forced killings, and running out of disk space are
2271 pretty rare.  Permission problems are far more common: one process
2272 accesses the repository and accidentally changes ownership or
2273 permissions, then another process tries to access and chokes on the
2274 permissions.</p>
2275
2276 <p>The best way to prevent this is to get your repository permissions
2277 and ownership set up correctly.  See <a href="#reposperms">here</a>
2278 for our recommendations.</p>
2279
2280 </div>
2281
2282
2283 <div id="wedged-repos"></div>
2284 <div class="h3" id="bdb-recovery" title="bdb-recovery">
2285 <h3>Every time I try to access my repository, the
2286 process just hangs. Is my repository corrupt?</h3>
2287
2288 <p>
2289 Your repository is not corrupt, nor is your data lost. If your process
2290 accesses the repository directly (mod_dav_svn, svnlook, svnadmin, or
2291 if you access a `file://' URL), then it's using Berkeley DB to access
2292 your data.  Berkeley DB is a journaling system, meaning that it logs
2293 everything it is about to do before it does so.  If your process is
2294 interrupted (Control-C, or segfault), then a lockfile is left behind,
2295 along with a logfile describing unfinished business.  Any other
2296 process that attempts to access the database will just hang, waiting
2297 for the lockfile to disappear.  To awaken your repository, you need to
2298 ask Berkeley DB to either finish the work, or rewind the database to a
2299 previous state that is known to be consistent.</p>
2300
2301 <p><b><span style="color: red">WARNING:</span> you can seriously corrupt
2302 your repository if you run recover and another process accesses the
2303 repository.</b></p>
2304
2305 <p>Make absolutely sure you disable all access to the repository before
2306 doing this (by shutting down Apache, removing executable permissions from
2307 'svn').  Make sure you run this command as the user that owns and manages
2308 the database, and not as root, else it will leave root-owned files in the
2309 db directory which cannot be opened by the non-root user that manages the
2310 database, which is typically either you or your Apache process.  Also be
2311 sure to have the correct umask set when you run recover, since failing to
2312 do so will lock out users that are in the group allowed to access the
2313 repository.</p>
2314
2315 <p>
2316 Simply run:</p>
2317
2318 <pre>
2319    svnadmin recover /path/to/repos
2320 </pre>
2321
2322 <p>Once the command has completed, check the permissions in the
2323 <code>db</code> directory of the repository.</p>
2324
2325 <p>Sometimes "svnadmin&nbsp;recover" doesn't work.  You may see it
2326 give errors like this:</p>
2327
2328 <pre>
2329   Repository lock acquired.
2330   Please wait; recovering the repository may take some time...
2331   svnadmin: DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery
2332   svnadmin: bdb: Recovery function for LSN 175 7066018 failed on backward pass
2333   svnadmin: bdb: PANIC: No such file or directory
2334   svnadmin: bdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery
2335 </pre>
2336
2337 <p>or like this:</p>
2338
2339 <pre>
2340   Repository lock acquired.
2341   Please wait; recovering the repository may take some time...
2342   svn: DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery
2343   svn: bdb: DB_ENV-&gt;log_flush: LSN of 115/802071 past current end-of-log
2344   of 115/731460
2345   svn: bdb: Database environment corrupt; the wrong log files may have
2346   been removed or incompatible database files imported from another
2347   environment
2348   [...]
2349   svn: bdb: changes: unable to flush page: 0
2350   svn: bdb: txn_checkpoint: failed to flush the buffer cache Invalid argument
2351   svn: bdb: PANIC: Invalid argument
2352   svn: bdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery
2353   svn: bdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery
2354   [...]
2355 </pre>
2356
2357 <p>In that case, try Berkeley DB's native <b>db_recover</b> utility
2358 (see <a href="http://www.oracle.com/technology/documentation/berkeley-db/db/utility/db_recover.html"
2359 >db_recover documentation</a>).  It
2360 usually lives in a "bin/" subdirectory of the Berkeley DB installation,
2361 for example if you installed Berkeley DB from source, it might be
2362 <tt>/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.2/bin/db_recover</tt>; or on systems where
2363 Berkeley DB comes prepackaged it might just be
2364 <tt>/usr/bin/db_recover</tt>.  If you have multiple versions of
2365 Berkeley DB installed, make sure that the version of db_recover you
2366 use matches the version of Berkeley DB with which your repository was
2367 created.</p>
2368
2369 <p>Run db_recover with the "-c" ("catastrophic recovery") flag.  You
2370 can also add "-v" for verbosity, and "-h" with an argument telling it
2371 what db environment to recover (so you don't have to cd into that
2372 directory).  Thus:</p>
2373
2374 <pre>
2375    db_recover -c -v -h /path/to/repos/db
2376 </pre>
2377
2378 <p>Run this command as the same user that owns the repository, and
2379 again, make absolutely sure that no other processes are accessing the
2380 repository while you do this (e.g., shut down svnserve or Apache).</p>
2381
2382 </div>
2383
2384
2385 <div class="h3" id="bdb-cannot-allocate-memory" title="bdb-cannot-allocate-memory">
2386 <h3>My repository keeps giving errors saying "Cannot allocate memory".
2387      What should I do?</h3>
2388
2389 <p>If you're using http:// access, "<b>Cannot allocate memory</b>"
2390 errors show up in the httpd error log and look something like
2391 this:</p>
2392
2393 <blockquote>
2394 <pre>
2395 [Wed Apr 07 04:26:10 2004] [error] [client 212.151.130.227] (20014)
2396 Error string not specified yet: Berkeley DB error while opening
2397 'strings' table for filesystem /usr/local/svn/repositories/svn/db:
2398 Cannot allocate memory
2399 [Wed Apr 07 04:26:10 2004] [error] [client 212.151.130.227]
2400 Could not fetch resource information.  [500, #0]
2401 [Wed Apr 07 04:26:10 2004] [error] [client 212.151.130.227]
2402 Could not open the requested SVN filesystem  [500, #160029]
2403 [Wed Apr 07 04:26:10 2004] [error] [client 212.151.130.227] (17)
2404 File exists: Could not open the requested SVN filesystem  [500, #160029]
2405 </pre>
2406 </blockquote>
2407
2408 <p>It usually means that a Berkeley DB repository has run out of
2409 database locks (this does not happen with FSFS repositories).  It
2410 shouldn't happen in the course of normal operations, but if it does,
2411 the solution is to run database recovery as described <a
2412 href="#bdb-recovery">here</a>.  If it happens often, you probably need
2413 to raise the default lock parameters (<tt>set_lk_max_locks</tt>,
2414 <tt>set_lk_max_lockers</tt>, and <tt>set_lk_max_objects</tt>) in the
2415 db/DB_CONFIG file.  When changing DB_CONFIG in an existing repository,
2416 remember to run recovery afterwards.</p>
2417
2418 </div>
2419
2420
2421 <div class="h3" id="wedged-wc" title="wedged-wc">
2422 <h3>Every time I try to run a svn command, it says my
2423 working copy is locked. Is my working copy corrupt?</h3>
2424
2425 <p>
2426 Your working copy is not corrupt, nor is your data lost.  Subversion's
2427 working copy is a journaling system, meaning that it logs everything it
2428 is about to do before it does so.  If the svn client program is
2429 interrupted violently (segfault or killed, not with Control-C), then
2430 one or more lockfiles are left behind, along with logfiles describing
2431 unfinished business.  (The `svn status' command will show an 'L' next
2432 to locked directories.)  Any other process that attempts to access the
2433 working copy will fail when it sees the locks.  To awaken your working
2434 copy, you need to tell the svn client to finish the work.  Simply
2435 run:</p>
2436
2437 <pre>
2438 svn cleanup working-copy
2439 </pre>
2440
2441 </div>
2442
2443
2444 <div class="h3" id="wc-out-of-date" title="wc-out-of-date">
2445 <h3>I'm trying to commit, but Subversion says my
2446 working copy is out of date?</h3>
2447
2448 <p>Three kinds of situation that can cause this:</p>
2449
2450 <ol>
2451
2452 <li><p>Debris from a failed commit is littering your working copy.</p>
2453
2454     <p>You may have had a commit that went sour between the time the
2455     new revision was added in the server and the time your client
2456     performed its post-commit admin tasks (including refreshing your
2457     local text-base copy).  This might happen for various reasons
2458     including (rarely) problems in the database back end or (more
2459     commonly) network dropouts at exactly the wrong time.</p>
2460
2461     <p>If this happens, it's possible that you have already committed
2462     the very changes you are trying now to commit.  You can use 'svn
2463     log -rHEAD' to see if your supposed-failed commit actually
2464     succeeded.  If it did, run 'svn revert' to revert your local
2465     changes, then run 'svn update' to get your own changes back from the
2466     server.  (Note that only 'svn update' brings your local copies
2467     up-to-date; revert doesn't do that.)</p>
2468 </li>
2469
2470 <li><p>Mixed revisions.</p>
2471
2472      <p>When Subversion commits, the client only bumps the revision
2473      numbers of the nodes the commit touches, not all nodes in the
2474      working copy.  This means that in a single working copy, the
2475      files and subdirectories might be at different revisions,
2476      depending on when you last committed them.  In certain operations
2477      (for example, directory property modifications), if the
2478      repository has a more recent version of the node, the commit will
2479      be rejected, to prevent data loss.  See <a
2480      href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/svnbook/ch02s03.html#svn-ch-2-sect-3.4">
2481      The Limitations of Mixed Revisions</a> in the <a
2482      href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/">Version Control with
2483      Subversion</a> for details.</p>
2484
2485      <p>You can fix the problem by running 'svn update' in the working
2486      copy.</p>
2487 </li>
2488
2489 <li><p>You might be genuinely out of date&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;that is,
2490     you're trying to commit a change to a file that has been changed
2491     by someone else since you last updated your copy of that file.
2492     Again, 'svn update' is the way to fix this.</p>
2493 </li>
2494 </ol>
2495 </div>
2496
2497
2498 <div class="h3" id="obstructed-add" title="obstructed-add">
2499 <h3>I've contributed a patch to a project and the patch added a new file.
2500 Now <tt>svn update</tt> does not work.</h3>
2501
2502 <p>In order to include your new file in the patch you likely ran the <tt>svn add</tt>
2503 command so that the <tt>svn diff</tt> command would include the new file in the patch.
2504 If your patch is committed to the code base and you run an <tt>svn update</tt>, then
2505 you might receive an error message of: "svn: Failed to add file 'my.new.file':
2506 object of the same name already exists".</p>
2507
2508 <p>The reason that you recieved this error is that you still have your local copy of
2509 the file in your working copy.  The steps to correct this problem are:</p>
2510
2511 <ol>
2512         <li>Run the <tt>svn revert</tt> command to remove the scheduled add within
2513         Subversion.</li>
2514         <li>Delete the file or move it to a location outside your working copy.</li>
2515         <li>Now you should be able to run the <tt>svn update</tt> command.</li>
2516 </ol>
2517
2518 <p>You might want to compare the new file from the repository with your original file.</p>
2519 </div>
2520
2521
2522 <div class="h3" id="unrecognized-url-error" title="unrecognized-url-error">
2523 <h3>I just built the distribution binary,
2524 and when I try to check out Subversion, I get an error about an
2525 "Unrecognized URL scheme."  What's up with that?</h3>
2526
2527 <p>Subversion uses a plugin system to allow access to repositories.
2528 Currently there are three of these plugins: ra_local allows access to
2529 a local repository, ra_dav which allows access to a repository via
2530 WebDAV, and ra_svn allows local or remote access via the svnserve
2531 server.  When you attempt to perform an operation in Subversion, the
2532 program tries to dynamically load a plugin based on the URL scheme.  A
2533 `file://' URL will try to load ra_local, and an `http://' URL will try
2534 to load ra_dav.</p>
2535
2536 <p>The error you are seeing means that the dynamic linker/loader can't find
2537 the plugins to load.  This normally happens when you build Subversion with
2538 shared libraries, then attempt to run it without first running 'make
2539 install'.  Another possible cause is that you ran make install, but the
2540 libraries were installed in a location that the dynamic linker/loader
2541 doesn't recognize.  Under Linux, you can allow the linker/loader to find the
2542 libraries by adding the library directory to /etc/ld.so.conf and running
2543 ldconfig.  If you don't wish to do this, or you don't have root access, you
2544 can also specify the library directory in the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment
2545 variable.</p>
2546
2547 </div>
2548
2549
2550 <div class="h3" id="db-recover" title="db-recover">
2551 <h3>I'm getting errors finding or opening a repository,
2552     but I know my repository URL is correct.  What's wrong?</h3>
2553
2554 <p>See <a href="#bdb-recovery">this faq.</a></p>
2555
2556 </div>
2557
2558
2559
2560 <div class="h3" id="configure-sed-error" title="configure-sed-error">
2561 <h3>When I run `<tt>configure</tt>', I get errors about
2562 <tt>subs-1.sed&nbsp;line&nbsp;38:&nbsp;Unterminated&nbsp;`s'&nbsp;command</tt>.
2563 What's wrong?</h3>
2564
2565 <p>
2566 You probably have old copies of
2567 <tt>/usr/local/bin/apr-config</tt> and
2568 <tt>/usr/local/bin/apu-config</tt> on your system.  Remove them, make
2569 sure the <tt>apr/</tt> and <tt>apr-util/</tt> that you're
2570 building with are completely up-to-date, and try again.
2571 </p>
2572
2573 </div>
2574
2575
2576 <div class="h3" id="windows-msvc-build" title="windows-msvc-build">
2577 <h3>I'm having trouble building Subversion
2578 under Windows with MSVC++ 6.0.  What should I do?</h3>
2579
2580 <p>
2581 Probably you just need to get the latest platform SDK.  The one that
2582 ships with VC++ 6.0 is not recent enough.
2583 </p>
2584
2585 </div>
2586
2587
2588 <div class="h3" id="windows-drive-letter" title="windows-drive-letter">
2589 <h3>How can I specify a Windows drive letter in
2590 a <tt>file:</tt> URL?</h3>
2591
2592 <p>Like this:</p>
2593 <pre>
2594 svn import file:///d:/some/path/to/repos/on/d/drive
2595 </pre>
2596 <p>See <a
2597 href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/html-chunk/ch02s03.html#svn-ch-2-sidebar-1">
2598 Repository URLs</a> in the Subversion Book for more details.</p>
2599
2600 </div>
2601
2602
2603 <div class="h3" id="vs-asp-net" title="vs-asp-net">
2604 <h3>VS.NET/ASP.NET seems to have a problem with
2605     the ".svn" directory name.  What should I do?</h3>
2606
2607 <p>VS.Net has a subsystem called ASP.Net, which uses WebDAV to do
2608 remote publishing through IIS.  This subsystem rejects any pathname
2609 that starts with ".".  This causes a problem when you try to remotely
2610 publish a Subversion working copy, because of the ".svn"
2611 subdirectories.  The error message says something like "unable to
2612 read project information".</p>
2613
2614 <p>To work around this, set the environment variable
2615 SVN_ASP_DOT_NET_HACK to any value&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;this will tell
2616 Windows clients to use "_svn" as a directory name in your working
2617 copy.  See <a
2618 href="http://subversion.tigris.org/svn_1.3_releasenotes.html#_svn-hack"
2619 >the relevant section of the Subversion 1.3 release notes</a> for more
2620 details, and see <a href="#adm-dir">this question</a> for other ways to
2621 customize the administrative directory name.</p>
2622
2623 </div>
2624
2625
2626 <div class="h3" id="write-over-dav" title="write-over-dav">
2627 <h3>I'm having trouble doing write
2628     operations to a Subversion repository over a network.</h3>
2629
2630 <p>For example, one user reported that imports worked fine over local
2631 access:</p>
2632 <pre>
2633   $ mkdir test
2634   $ touch test/testfile
2635   $ svn import test file:///var/svn/test -m "Initial import"
2636   Adding         test/testfile
2637   Transmitting file data .
2638   Committed revision 1.
2639 </pre>
2640 But not from a remote host:
2641 <pre>
2642   $ svn import http://svn.sabi.net/test testfile -m "import"
2643   nicholas's password: xxxxxxx
2644
2645   svn_error: #21110 : &lt;Activity not found&gt;
2646
2647   The specified activity does not exist.
2648 </pre>
2649
2650 <p> We've seen this when the REPOS/dav/ directory is not writable by
2651 the httpd process.  Check the permissions to ensure Apache can write
2652 to the <tt>dav/</tt> directory (and to <tt>db/</tt>, of course).  </p>
2653
2654 </div>
2655
2656
2657
2658 <div class="h3" id="windows-xp-server" title="windows-xp-server">
2659 <h3>Under Windows XP, the Subversion server
2660     sometimes seems to send out corrupted data.  Can this really
2661     be happening?</h3>
2662
2663 <p>You need to install Window XP Service Pack 1.  You can get all
2664 sorts of information about that Service Pack here:</p>
2665
2666     <ul><li>
2667     <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q317949"
2668     >http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q317949</a>
2669     </li></ul>
2670
2671 </div>
2672
2673
2674 <a name="ethereal"></a> <!-- for compatibility with old question -->
2675 <div class="h3" id="net-trace" title="net-trace">
2676 <h3>What is the best method of doing a network
2677     trace of the conversation between a Subversion client and
2678     server?</h3>
2679
2680 <p>Use <a href="http://www.wireshark.org/">Wireshark</a> (formerly
2681 known as "Ethereal") to eavesdrop on the conversation.</p>
2682
2683 <p>First, make sure that between captures within the same wireshark
2684 session, you hit <em>Clear</em>, otherwise filters from one capture
2685 (say, an HTTP capture) might interfere with others (say, an ra_svn
2686 capture). </p>
2687
2688 <p>Assuming you're cleared, then:</p>
2689
2690 <ol>
2691 <li><p>Pull down the <i>Capture</i> menu, and choose
2692     <i>Capture&nbsp;Filters</i>.</p></li>
2693 <li><p>If debugging the http:// (WebDAV) protocol, then in the window
2694     that pops up, choose "<code>HTTP&nbsp;TCP&nbsp;port&nbsp;(80)</code>"
2695     (which should result in the filter string
2696     "<code><i>tcp&nbsp;port&nbsp;http</i></code>").</p>
2697     <p>If debugging the svn:// (ra_svn) protocol, then choose <i>New</i>,
2698     give the new filter a name (say, "ra_svn"), and type
2699     "<code>tcp&nbsp;port&nbsp;3690</code>" into the filter string box.</p>
2700     <p>When done, click OK.</p></li>
2701 <li><p>Again go to the <i>Capture</i> menu, this time choose
2702     <i>Interfaces</i>, and click <i>Options</i> next to the
2703     appropriate interface (probably you want interface "lo", for
2704     "loopback", assuming the server will run on the same machine as
2705     the client).</p></li>
2706 <li><p>Turn off promiscuous mode by unchecking the appropriate
2707     checkbox.</p></li>
2708 <li><p>Click the <i>Start</i> button in the lower right to start the
2709     capture.</p></li>
2710 <li><p>Run your Subversion client.</p></li>
2711 <li><p>Click the Stop icon (a red X over an ethernet interface card) when
2712     the operation is finished (or <i>Capture-&gt;Stop</i> should
2713     work).  Now you have a capture.  It looks like a huge list of
2714     lines.</p></li>
2715 <li><p>Click on the <i>Protocol</i> column to sort.</p></li>
2716 <li><p>Then, click on the first relevant line to select it; usually this
2717     is just the first line.</p></li>
2718 <li><p>Right click, and choose <i>Follow TCP Stream</i>.  You'll be
2719     presented with the request/response pairs of the Subversion
2720     client's HTTP conversion.</p></li>
2721 </ol>
2722
2723 <p>The above instructions are specific to the graphical version of
2724 Wireshark (version 0.99.6), and don't apply to the command-line
2725 version known as "tshark" (which corresponds to "tethereal", from back
2726 when Wireshark was called Ethereal).</p>
2727
2728 <p>Alternatively, you may set the <tt>neon-debug-mask</tt> parameter in your
2729 <tt>servers</tt> configuration file to cause neon's debugging output
2730 to appear when you run the <tt>svn</tt> client.  The numeric value of
2731 <tt>neon-debug-mask</tt> is a combination of the <tt>NE_DBG_...</tt> values
2732 in the header file <tt>ne_utils.h</tt>.  For current versions of neon, setting
2733 <tt>neon-debug-mask</tt> to 130 (i.e. <tt>NE_DBG_HTTP+NE_DBG_HTTPBODY)</tt>
2734 will cause the HTTP data to be shown.</p>
2735
2736 <p>You may well want to disable compression when doing a network
2737 trace&mdash;see the <tt>http-compression</tt> parameter in the <tt>servers</tt>
2738 configuration file.</p>
2739
2740 <p>Another alternative is to set up a logging proxy between the
2741  Subversion client and server.  A simple way to do this is to use
2742  the <tt>socat</tt> program.  For example, to log communication with
2743  an svnserve instance, run the following command:</p>
2744
2745 <p><tt>socat -v  TCP4-LISTEN:9630,reuseaddr,fork
2746     TCP4:localhost:svn</tt></p>
2747
2748 <p>Then run your svn commands using an URL base
2749   of <tt>svn://127.0.0.1:9630/</tt>; <tt>socat</tt> will forward the
2750   traffic from port 9630 to the normal svnserve port (3690), and will
2751   print all traffic in both directions to standard error, prefixing it
2752   with &lt; and &gt; signs to show the direction of the traffic.</p>
2753
2754 </div>
2755
2756
2757 <div class="h3" id="revert" title="revert">
2758 <h3>Why does the <tt>svn revert</tt> require an
2759     explicit target?  Why is it not recursive by default?  These
2760     behaviors differ from almost all the other subcommands.</h3>
2761
2762 <p>The short answer: it's for your own good.</p>
2763
2764 <p>Subversion places a very high priority on protecting your data, and
2765 not just your versioned data.  Modifications that you make to
2766 already-versioned files, and new files scheduled for addition to the
2767 version control system, must be treated with care.</p>
2768
2769 <p>Making the <tt>svn revert</tt> command require an explicit
2770 target&mdash;even if that target is just '.'&mdash;is one way of
2771 accomplishing that.  This requirement (as well as requiring you to
2772 supply the <tt>--recursive (-R)</tt> flag if you want that behavior)
2773 is intended to make you really think about what you're doing, because
2774 once your files are reverted, your local modifications are gone
2775 forever.</p>
2776
2777 </div>
2778
2779
2780
2781 <div class="h3" id="db3db4" title="db3db4">
2782 <h3>When I start Apache, mod_dav_svn complains about
2783     a "bad database version", that it found db-3.X, rather than
2784     db-4.X.</h3>
2785
2786 <p>Your apr-util linked against DB-3, and svn linked against DB-4.
2787 Unfortunately, the DB symbols aren't different.  When mod_dav_svn is
2788 loaded into Apache's process-space, it ends up resolving the
2789 symbol names against apr-util's DB-3 library.</p>
2790
2791 <p>The solution is to make sure apr-util compiles against DB-4.  You
2792 can do this by passing specific switches to either apr-util's or
2793 apache's configure: "--with-dbm=db4 --with-berkeley-db=/the/db/prefix".</p>
2794
2795 </div>
2796
2797
2798
2799 <div class="h3" id="redhat-db" title="redhat-db">
2800 <h3>I'm getting "Function not implemented" errors on Red Hat
2801 9, and nothing works.  How do I fix this?</h3>
2802
2803 <p>This is not really a problem with Subversion, but it often affects
2804 Subversion users.</p>
2805
2806 <p>Red Hat 9 and Fedora ship with a Berkeley DB library that relies on
2807 the kernel support for NPTL (the Native Posix Threads Library).</p>
2808
2809 <p>The kernels that Red Hat provides have this support built in, but if you
2810 compile your own kernel, then you may well not have the NPTL support.  If that
2811 is the case, then you will see errors like this:</p>
2812 <blockquote><pre>
2813 svn: Berkeley DB error
2814 svn: Berkeley DB error while creating environment for filesystem tester/db:
2815 Function not implemented
2816 </pre></blockquote>
2817 <p>This can be fixed in one of several ways:</p>
2818 <ul>
2819 <li>Rebuild Berkeley DB for the kernel you're using.</li>
2820 <li>Use a Red Hat 9 kernel.</li>
2821 <li>Apply the NPTL patches to the kernel you're using.</li>
2822 <li>Use a recent (2.5.x) kernel with the NPTL support included.</li>
2823 <li>Check if environment variable <code>LD_ASSUME_KERNEL</code> is set
2824     to <code>2.2.5</code>, and if so, unset it before starting
2825     Subversion (Apache). (You usually would set this variable to run
2826     Wine or Winex on Red Hat 9)</li>
2827 </ul>
2828 <p>To use the NPTL version of Berkeley DB you also need to use a glibc
2829 library with NPTL support, which probably means the i686 version. See
2830 <a
2831 href="http://svn.haxx.se/users/archive-2004-03/0488.shtml">
2832 http://svn.haxx.se/users/archive-2004-03/0488.shtml
2833 </a> for details.
2834 </p>
2835
2836 </div>
2837
2838
2839 <div class="h3" id="no-author" title="no-author">
2840 <h3>Why does SVN log say "(no author)" for files
2841     committed or imported via Apache (ra_dav)?</h3>
2842
2843 <p>If you allow anonymous write access to the repository via Apache,
2844 the Apache server never challenges the SVN client for a username, and
2845 instead permits the write operation without authentication.  Since
2846 Subversion has no idea who did the operation, this results in a log
2847 like this:</p>
2848
2849 <blockquote><pre>
2850 $ svn log
2851 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
2852 rev 24:&nbsp; (no author) | 2003-07-29 19:28:35 +0200 (Tue, 29 Jul 2003)
2853 </pre></blockquote>
2854
2855 <p>See the Subversion Book (<a
2856 href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/book.html#svn-ch-5-sect-4"
2857 >"Networking a Repository"</a>)
2858 to learn about configuring access restrictions in Apache.</p>
2859
2860 </div>
2861
2862
2863
2864 <div class="h3" id="windows-access-denied" title="windows-access-denied">
2865 <h3>I'm getting occasional "Access Denied"
2866 errors on Windows.  They seem to happen at random.  Why?</h3>
2867
2868 <p>These appear to be due to the various Windows services that monitor
2869 the filesystem for changes (anti-virus software, indexing services, the
2870 COM+ Event Notification Service).  This is not really a bug in Subversion,
2871 which makes it difficult for us to fix.  A summary of the current state of
2872 the investigation is available <a href=
2873 "http://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2003-10/0136.shtml">here</a>.
2874 A workaround that should reduce the incidence rate for most people was
2875 implemented in revision 7598; if you have an earlier version, please
2876 update to the latest release.
2877 </p>
2878
2879 </div>
2880
2881
2882 <div class="h3" id="freebsd-hang" title="freebsd-hang">
2883 <h3>On FreeBSD, certain operations (especially
2884     svnadmin create) sometimes hang.  Why?</h3>
2885
2886 <p>This is usually due to a lack of available entropy on the system.
2887 You probably need to configure the system to gather entropy from
2888 sources such as hard-disk and network interrupts.  Consult your system
2889 manpages, specifically random(4) and rndcontrol(8) on how to effect
2890 this change.</p>
2891
2892 </div>
2893
2894
2895 <a name="301-error"></a> <!-- for compatibility with old
2896   non-XML-name-compliant fragment id -->
2897 <div class="h3" id="http-301-error" title="http-301-error">
2898 <h3>I can see my repository in a web browser, but
2899     'svn checkout' gives me an error about "301 Moved Permanently".
2900     What's wrong?</h3>
2901
2902 <p>It means your httpd.conf is misconfigured.  Usually this error happens
2903 when you've defined the Subversion virtual "location" to exist within
2904 two different scopes at the same time.</p>
2905
2906 <p>For example, if you've exported a repository as <tt>&lt;Location
2907 /www/foo&gt;</tt>, but you've also set your <tt>DocumentRoot</tt> to
2908 be <tt>/www</tt>, then you're in trouble.  When the request comes in
2909 for <tt>/www/foo/bar</tt>, apache doesn't know whether to find a
2910 <i>real</i> file named <tt>/foo/bar</tt> within your
2911 <tt>DocumentRoot</tt>, or whether to ask mod_dav_svn to fetch a file
2912 <tt>/bar</tt> from the <tt>/www/foo</tt> repository.  Usually the
2913 former case wins, and hence the "Moved Permanently" error.</p>
2914
2915 <p>The solution is to make sure your repository
2916 <tt>&lt;Location&gt;</tt> does <b>not</b> overlap or live within any
2917 areas already exported as normal web shares.</p>
2918
2919 <p>It's also possible that you have an object in the web root
2920 which has the same name as your repository URL. For example,
2921 imagine your web server's document root is  <tt>/var/www</tt>
2922 and your Subversion repository is located at
2923 <tt>/home/svn/repo</tt>. You then configure Apache to serve
2924 the repository at <tt>http://localhost/myrepo</tt>. If you then
2925 create the directory <tt>/var/www/myrepo/</tt> this will cause
2926 a 301 error to occur.</p>
2927
2928
2929 </div>
2930
2931
2932 <div class="h3" id="no-copy-history" title="no-copy-history">
2933 <h3>I'm trying to look at an old version of my
2934     file, but svn says something about "path not found".  What's going
2935     on?</h3>
2936
2937 <p>A nice feature of Subversion is that the repository understands
2938 copies and renames, and preserves the historical connections.  For
2939 example, if you copy <tt>/trunk</tt> to <tt>/branches/mybranch</tt>,
2940 then the repository understands that every file in the branch has a
2941 "predecessor" in the trunk.  Running <tt>svn log --verbose</tt> will
2942 show you the historical copy, so you can see the rename:</p>
2943
2944 <pre>
2945 r7932 | joe | 2003-12-03 17:54:02 -0600 (Wed, 03 Dec 2003) | 1 line
2946 Changed paths:
2947    A /branches/mybranch (from /trunk:7931)
2948 </pre>
2949
2950 <p>Unfortunately, while the repository is aware of copies and renames,
2951 almost all the svn client subcommands are <b>not</b> aware.  Commands
2952 like <tt>svn diff</tt>, <tt>svn merge</tt>, and <tt>svn cat</tt> ought
2953 to understand and follow renames, but don't yet do this.  It's
2954 scheduled as post-1.0 feature, currently <a
2955 href="http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=1093">issue
2956 #1093</a>.  For example, if you ask <tt>svn diff</tt> to compare two
2957 earlier versions of <tt>/branches/mybranch/foo.c</tt>, the command
2958 will not automatically understand that the task actually requires
2959 comparing two versions of <tt>/trunk/foo.c</tt>, due to the rename.
2960 Instead, you'll see an error about how the branch-path doesn't exist
2961 in the earlier revisions.</p>
2962
2963 <p>The workaround for all problems of this sort is to do the legwork
2964 yourself.  That is: <i>you</i> need to be aware of any renamed paths,
2965 discover them yourself using <tt>svn log -v</tt>, and then provide
2966 them explicitly to the svn client.  For example, instead of
2967 running</p>
2968
2969 <pre>
2970 $ svn diff -r 1000:2000 http://host/repos/branches/mybranch/foo.c
2971 svn: Filesystem has no item
2972 svn: '/branches/mybranch/fooc..c' not found in the repository at revision 1000
2973 </pre>
2974
2975 ...you would instead run
2976
2977 <pre>
2978 $ svn diff -r1000:2000 http://host/repos/trunk/foo.c
2979 ...
2980 </pre>
2981
2982 </div>
2983
2984
2985 <div class="h3" id="digest-auth" title="digest-auth">
2986 <h3>Why doesn't HTTP Digest auth work?</h3>
2987
2988 <p>This is probably due to a known bug in Apache HTTP Server (versions
2989    2.0.48 and earlier), for which a patch is available, see
2990 <a href="http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=25040"
2991    >http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=25040</a>.  You
2992 may also want to read over
2993 <a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=1608"
2994    >http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=1608</a>
2995 to see if the description there matches your symptoms.
2996 </p>
2997
2998 </div>
2999
3000
3001 <div class="h3" id="xlc-compile" title="xlc-compile">
3002 <h3>Compiling with xlc on AIX, I get compilation
3003     errors.  What's wrong?</h3>
3004
3005 <p>Adding <tt>-qlanglvl=extended</tt> to the
3006 environment variable CFLAGS for configuration and build
3007 will make xlc a bit more flexible and the code should
3008 compile without error.  See
3009 <a href="http://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2004-01/0922.shtml"
3010 >http://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2004-01/0922.shtml</a> and
3011 its associated thread for more details.
3012 </p>
3013
3014 </div>
3015
3016
3017 <div class="h3" id="nonrecursive-checkout" title="nonrecursive-checkout">
3018 <h3>I checked out a directory non-recursively
3019     (with -N), and now I want to make certain subdirectories
3020     "appear".  But <tt>svn up subdir</tt> doesn't work.</h3>
3021
3022 <p>See <a
3023 href="http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=695">issue
3024 695</a>.  The current implementation of <tt>svn checkout -N</tt> is
3025 quite broken.  It results in a working copy which has missing entries,
3026 yet is ignorant of its "incompleteness".  Apparently a whole bunch of
3027 CVS users are fairly dependent on this paradigm, but none of the
3028 Subversion developers were.  For now, there's really no workaround
3029 other than to change your process: try checking out separate
3030 subdirectories of the repository and manually nesting your working
3031 copies.</p>
3032
3033 </div>
3034
3035
3036 <div class="h3" id="mod_dav_svn-win32" title="mod_dav_svn-win32">
3037 <h3>I am trying to use mod_dav_svn
3038     with Apache on Win32 and I'm getting an error saying that the
3039     module cannot be found, yet the mod_dav_svn.so file is right
3040     there in <tt>\Apache\modules.</tt></h3>
3041
3042 <p>The error message in this case is a little misleading. Most likely
3043 Apache is unable to load one or more DLLs that <tt>mod_dav_svn.so</tt>
3044 relies on.  If Apache is running as a service it will not have the
3045 same <tt>PATH</tt> as a regular user.  Make sure that
3046 <tt>libdb4*.dll</tt>, <tt>intl3_svn.dll</tt>, <tt>libeay32.dll</tt>
3047 and <tt>ssleay32.dll</tt> are present in either <tt>\Apache\bin</tt> or
3048 <tt>\Apache\modules</tt>.  You can copy them from your Subversion
3049 installation directory if they are not there.</p>
3050
3051 <p>If this still does not resolve the problem, you should use a tool
3052 like <a href="http://www.dependencywalker.com">Dependency Walker</a>
3053 on <tt>mod_dav_svn.so</tt> to see if there are any other unresolved
3054 dependencies.</p>
3055
3056 </div>
3057
3058
3059 <a name="win32-hooks"></a> <!-- for compatibility with old question -->
3060 <a name="hook-environment"></a> <!-- for yet more compatibility with old question -->
3061 <div class="h3" id="hook-debugging" title="hook-debugging">
3062 <h3>Why aren't my repository hooks working?</h3>
3063
3064 <p>They're supposed to invoke external programs, but the invocations
3065 never seem to happen.</p>
3066
3067 <p>Before Subversion calls a hook script, it removes <em>all</em>
3068             variables -- including $PATH on Unix, and %PATH% on Windows
3069             -- from the environment.  Therefore, your script can only
3070             run another program if you
3071 spell out that program's absolute name.</p>
3072
3073 <p><b>Debugging tips:</b></p>
3074 <p>
3075 If you're using Linux or Unix, try running the script "by hand", by
3076 following these steps:</p>
3077
3078           <ol>
3079             <li>Use "su", "sudo", or something similar, to become the user who
3080               normally would run the script.  This might be <tt>httpd</tt> or
3081               <tt>www-data</tt>, for example, if you're using Apache;
3082               it might be a user like <tt>svn</tt> if you're running
3083               svnserve and a special Subversion user exists.  This
3084               will make clear any permissions problems that the script
3085               might have.
3086             </li>
3087             <li>
3088               Invoke the script with an empty environment by using the
3089               "env" program.  Here's an
3090               example for the post-commit hook:
3091 <blockquote><pre>
3092                   $ env - ./post-commit /var/lib/svn-repos 1234
3093 </pre></blockquote>
3094               Note the first argument to "env" is a dash; that's what
3095               ensures the environment is empty.
3096             </li>
3097             <li>
3098               Check your console for errors.
3099             </li>
3100           </ol>
3101
3102 </div>
3103
3104
3105 <div class="h3" id="diff-cmd" title="diff-cmd">
3106 <h3>Why does my --diff-cmd complain about '-u'?
3107     I tried to override it with --extensions, but it's not working.</h3>
3108
3109 <p>When using an external diff command, Subversion builds a fairly
3110 complicated command line. First is the specified --diff-cmd. Next comes
3111 the specified --extensions (although empty --extensions are ignored), or
3112 '-u' if --extensions is unspecified (or specified as ''). Third and
3113 fourth, Subversion passes a '-L' and the first file's label (e.g.
3114 "project_issues.html    (revision 11209)"). Fifth and sixth are another
3115 '-L' and the second label. Seventh and eighth are the first and second
3116 file names (e.g. ".svn/text-base/project_issues.html.svn-base" and
3117 ".svn/tmp/project_issues.html.tmp").</p>
3118
3119 <p>If your preferred diff command does not support these arguments, you
3120 may need to create a small wrapper script to discard arguments and just
3121 use the last couple file paths.</p>
3122
3123 <p>Warning: Beware that Subversion does not expect the external diff
3124 program to change the files it receives, and doing so may scramble the
3125 working copy.</p>
3126
3127 <p>For further information, see issue
3128 <a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2044">#2044</a>.</p>
3129
3130 </div>
3131
3132
3133 <div class="h3" id="plaintext-passwords" title="plaintext-passwords">
3134 <h3>Ahhh!  I just discovered that my
3135     Subversion client is caching passwords in plain-text on disk!
3136     AHHH!</h3>
3137
3138 <p>Calm down, take a deep breath.</p>
3139
3140 <p>On Windows 2000 or later, svn 1.2 and above uses standard
3141 Windows APIs to encrypt the data, so only the user can decrypt the
3142 cached password.</p>
3143
3144 <p>On Mac OS X, svn 1.4 and later uses the system Keychain
3145 facility to encrypt/store your svn password.</p>
3146
3147 <p>On UNIX/Linux, there are no standard system encryption facilities,
3148 so the password is stored in ~/.subversion/auth/.  Notice, however,
3149 that the directory which contains the cached passwords (usually
3150 ~/.subversion/auth/) has permissions of 700, meaning only you can read
3151 them.</p>
3152
3153 <p>Trust your OS to protect data on disk.</p>
3154
3155 <p>However, if you're really worried, you can permanently turn off
3156 password caching.  With an svn 1.0 client, just set 'store-auth-creds
3157 = no' in your run-time config file.  With an svn 1.1 client or later,
3158 you can use the more narrowly-defined 'store-passwords = no' (so that
3159 server certs are still cached). More information on password cacheing
3160 is in chapter 6 of the <a
3161 href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/nightly/en/index.html">"Nightly
3162 Build" Subversion book</a>, under
3163 <a href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/nightly/en/svn.serverconfig.netmodel.html#svn.serverconfig.netmodel.credcache">
3164 "Client Credentials Caching".</a></p>
3165
3166 <p>Lastly, we point out that CVS has been caching passwords for years
3167 in the .cvspass file.  It may look like the passwords in .cvspass are
3168 encrypted, but in fact they're only lightly scrambled with an
3169 algorithm that's the moral equivalent to rot13.  They can be cracked
3170 instantly.  The only utility of the scrambling is to prevent users
3171 (like root) from accidentally seeing the password.  Nobody's cared
3172 enough to do this for Subversion yet; if you're interested, send
3173 patches to the dev@ list.</p>
3174
3175 </div>
3176
3177
3178 <div class="h3" id="bdb41-tabletype-bug" title="bdb41-tabletype-bug">
3179 <h3>I'm getting the error "svn: bdb: call
3180     implies an access method which is inconsistent with previous
3181     calls". How do I fix this?</h3>
3182
3183 <p>Berkeley DB 4.1 has shown itself to be rather unstable - both 4.0
3184 and 4.2 are better.  This error message is a symptom of one unique way
3185 in which 4.1 will sometimes break.</p>
3186
3187 <p>The problem is that the database format field for one of the tables
3188 that make up a Subversion repository using the Berkeley DB backend has
3189 become corrupted.  For unknown reasons, this is almost always the
3190 'copies' table, which switches from the 'btree' type to the 'recno'
3191 type.  Simple recovery procedures are outlined below - if they do not
3192 succeed, you should contact the Subversion Users <a
3193   href="mailto:users@subversion.tigris.org">mailing list</a>.</p>
3194
3195 <ul>
3196   <li>Ensure that no other processes will attempt to access your
3197   repository.</li>
3198   <li>Now, <b>back up your repository</b> to a tar or zip file or
3199   similar.</li>
3200   <li>Change to the <tt>db</tt> subdirectory of your repository.</li>
3201   <li><tt>rm __db.* log.*</tt></li>
3202   <li><tt>db_dump -p -r copies &gt; copies.dump</tt></li>
3203   <li>Now edit <tt>copies.dump</tt>.  In the section near the top,
3204   change "<tt>type=recno</tt>" to "<tt>type=btree</tt>", and delete
3205   the line beginning "<tt>re_len=</tt>".</li>
3206   <li><tt>rm copies</tt></li>
3207   <li><tt>db_load copies &lt; copies.dump</tt></li>
3208   <li><tt>svnadmin dump .. &gt; ../../my-recovered.svndump</tt></li>
3209   <li>Now create a new repository, reload the dump file just produced,
3210   and copy across any custom hooks or configuration.  Verify that the
3211   highest revision number in the new repository is what you think it
3212   should be.</li>
3213 </ul>
3214
3215 </div>
3216
3217
3218 <div class="h3" id="hotcopy-large-repos" title="hotcopy-large-repos">
3219 <h3>I can't hotbackup my repository,
3220     svnadmin fails on files larger than 2Gb!</h3>
3221
3222 <p>Early versions of APR on its 0.9 branch, which Apache 2.0.x and
3223 Subversion 1.x use, have no support for copying large files (2Gb+).
3224 A fix which solves the 'svnadmin hotcopy' problem has been applied and
3225 is included in APR 0.9.5+ and Apache 2.0.50+.  The fix doesn't work
3226 on all platforms, but works on Linux.
3227 </p>
3228
3229 </div>
3230
3231
3232 <div class="h3" id="hidden-log" title="hidden-log">
3233 <h3>I cannot see the log entry for the file
3234     I just committed.  Why?</h3>
3235
3236 <p>Assume you run '<tt>svn&nbsp;checkout</tt>' on a repository and
3237 receive a working copy at revision 7 (aka, r7) with one file in it
3238 called <tt>foo.c</tt>.  You modify the file and commit it
3239 successfully.  Two things happen:</p>
3240
3241 <ul>
3242 <li>The repository moves to r8 on the server.</li>
3243 <li>In your working copy, only the file <tt>foo.c</tt> moves to r8.
3244     The rest of your working copy remains at r7.</li>
3245 </ul>
3246
3247 <p>You now have what is known as a <i>mixed revision working copy</i>.
3248 One file is at r8, but all other files remain at r7 until they too are
3249 committed, or until '<tt>svn&nbsp;update</tt>' is run.</p>
3250
3251 <pre>   $ svn -v status
3252    7        7 nesscg       .
3253    8        8 nesscg       foo.c
3254    $</pre>
3255
3256 <p>If you run the '<tt>svn&nbsp;log</tt>' command without any
3257 arguments, it prints the log information for the current directory
3258 (named '<tt>.</tt>' in the above listing).  Since the directory itself
3259 is still at r7, you do not see the log information for r8.</p>
3260
3261 <p>To see the latest logs, do one of the following:</p>
3262
3263 <ol>
3264 <li>Run '<tt>svn&nbsp;log&nbsp;-rHEAD</tt>'.</li>
3265 <li>Run '<tt>svn&nbsp;log&nbsp;URL</tt>', where URL is the repository URL.</li>
3266 <li>Ask for just that file's log information, by running
3267     '<tt>svn&nbsp;log&nbsp;foo.c</tt>'.</li>
3268 <li>Update your working copy so it's all at r8, then run
3269     '<tt>svn&nbsp;log</tt>'.</li>
3270 </ol>
3271
3272 </div>
3273
3274
3275 <div class="h3" id="bdb43-upgrade" title="bdb43-upgrade">
3276 <h3>After upgrading to Berkeley DB
3277     4.3 or later, I'm seeing repository errors.</h3>
3278
3279 <p>Prior to Berkeley DB 4.3, <tt>svnadmin recover</tt> worked to upgrade a
3280 Berkeley DB repository in-place.  However, due to a change in the behaviour
3281 of Berkeley DB in version 4.3, this now fails.</p>
3282
3283 <p>Use this procedure to upgrade your repository in-place to Berkeley
3284 DB 4.3 or later:</p>
3285
3286 <ul>
3287
3288 <li>Make sure no process is accessing the repository (stop
3289 Apache, svnserve, restrict access via file://, svnlook, svnadmin,
3290 etc.)</li>
3291
3292 <li>Using an <i>older</i> <tt>svnadmin</tt> binary (that is, linked to
3293   an older Berkeley DB):
3294
3295   <ol>
3296
3297   <li>Recover the
3298     repository: '<tt>svnadmin&nbsp;recover&nbsp;/path/to/repository</tt>'</li>
3299
3300   <li>Make a backup of the repository.</li>
3301
3302   <li>Delete all unused log files.  You can see them by running
3303     '<tt>svnadmin&nbsp;list-unused-dblogs&nbsp;/path/to/repeository</tt>'</li>
3304
3305   <li>Delete the shared-memory files.  These are files in the
3306       repository's <tt>db/</tt> directory, of the form <tt>__db.00*</tt></li>
3307
3308   </ol>
3309 </li>
3310
3311 </ul>
3312
3313
3314 <p>The repository is now usable by Berkeley DB 4.3.</p>
3315
3316 </div>
3317
3318
3319 <div class="h3" id="tiger-apr-0.9.6" title="tiger-apr-0.9.6">
3320 <h3>Why do I get occasional, seemingly inconsistent errors when checking
3321     out over http:// from a repository running on MacOS X 10.4 (Tiger)?</h3>
3322
3323 <p>Note: this assumes the repository is being served by Apache 2.0.x.</p>
3324
3325 <p>There is <a href="http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=34332"
3326 >a bug in APR 0.9.6</a> that is present when it is running on Tiger,
3327 and shows up when you attempt to check out a file larger than 64Kb.
3328 The resulting checkout fails, often with unpredictable error messages.
3329 Here are some examples of what you might see on the client side, the
3330 specific errors may differ for you:</p>
3331
3332 <pre>
3333    svn: Invalid diff stream: [tgt] insn 1 starts beyond the target view position
3334 </pre>
3335
3336 <pre>
3337    svn: Unexpected end of svndiff input
3338 </pre>
3339
3340 <pre>
3341    svn: REPORT request failed on '/path/to/repository'
3342    svn: REPORT of '/path/to/repository/!svn/vcc/default': Chunk delimiter was invalid
3343 </pre>
3344
3345 <p>There may also be errors in the Apache error_log, such as:</p>
3346
3347 <pre>
3348    [error] Provider encountered an error while streaming a REPORT response.  [500, #0]
3349    [error] A failure occurred while driving the update report editor [500, #190004]
3350 </pre>
3351
3352 <p>To confirm the presence of this bug &nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp; assuming
3353 you have access to the machine that the repository is being served
3354 from &nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp; try checking out using a file:// URL, which
3355 will access the filesystem directly instead of going through Apache.
3356 If the resulting checkout completes successfully, then it is almost
3357 certain that this is the problem.</p>
3358
3359 <p>Currently, the best solution is to upgrade to APR 1.2.0+.</p>
3360
3361 <p>Alternately, you can rebuild Apache and Subversion from their
3362 respective sources, setting the following environment variable before
3363 running configure for Apache:</p>
3364
3365 <pre>
3366    setenv ac_cv_func_poll no
3367 </pre>
3368
3369 <p>or in Bourne shell syntax, like this:</p>
3370
3371 <pre>
3372    ac_cv_func_poll=no; export ac_cv_func_poll
3373 </pre>
3374
3375 <p>If you built APR / APRUTIL separately (i.e., you did not use the
3376 ones that come as part of the Apache tarball), you must set that
3377 environment variable before running configure for APR, as this is
3378 where the problem lies.</p>
3379
3380 </div>
3381
3382
3383 <div class="h3" id="debian-libtool" title="debian-libtool">
3384 <h3>I can't build Subversion from working copy
3385     source on Debian GNU/Linux; I get errors at the final link
3386     stage.  What's wrong?</h3>
3387
3388 <p>If you see errors like this in the final link stage of a Subversion
3389 trunk source build:</p>
3390
3391 <pre>
3392    /usr/local/apache2/lib/libaprutil-0.so.0: undefined reference to `db_create'
3393    /usr/local/apache2/lib/libaprutil-0.so.0: undefined reference to `db_strerror'
3394 </pre>
3395
3396 <p>it might be because you're on a Debian GNU/Linux system and need to
3397 upgrade 'libtool'.  (I've also heard that the Debian packagers had to
3398 tweak 'libtool' and that this may cause some problems for Subversion
3399 builds.  But that's hearsay&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;I didn't have time to
3400 verify the details before writing this FAQ entry.  However, see <a
3401 href="http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&amp;msgNo=112617"
3402 >http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&amp;msgNo=112617</a>
3403 and the <a
3404 href="http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/BrowseList?list=dev&amp;by=thread&amp;from=435265"
3405 >thread</a> it spawned for a detailed discussion.)</p>
3406
3407 <p>In any case, after encountering this problem on a Debian GNU/Linux
3408 system running a newly-dist-upgraded 'testing' distribution on 15 Nov
3409 2005, the solution was to build <a
3410 href="http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/libtool.html">libtool&nbsp;1.5.20</a>
3411 from source, using the standard "./configure &amp;&amp; make &amp;&amp;
3412 sudo&nbsp;make&nbsp;install" recipe.  After that, I did a 'make&nbsp;clean' in
3413 my Subversion working copy tree, './autogen.sh', './configure', 'make',
3414 and everything worked fine.</p>
3415
3416 <p>Note that another report of these symptoms appeared at <a
3417 href="http://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2003-01/1125.shtml"
3418 >http://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2003-01/1125.shtml</a>, though the
3419 solution described here was not mentioned in that thread.</p>
3420
3421 </div>
3422
3423
3424 <div class="h3" id="freebsd-listen-host" title="freebsd-listen-host">
3425 <h3>I'm using FreeBSD, and I've started svnserve, but it doesn't seem
3426   to be listening on port 3690.</h3>
3427
3428 <p>Short answer: invoke <tt>svnserve</tt> with
3429    the <tt>--listen-host=0.0.0.0</tt> option.</p>
3430 <p>Slightly longer answer: FreeBSD daemons only listen on tcp6 by
3431   default; that option tells them to also listen on tcp4.</p>
3432 </div>
3433
3434 <div class="h3" id="already-under-version-control" title="already-under-version-control">
3435 <h3>I can't add a directory
3436     because Subversion says it's "already under version control".</h3>
3437 <p>The directory you're trying to add already contains
3438   a <tt>.svn</tt> subdirectory, but it's from a different repository
3439   than the directory to which you're trying to add it.  This probably
3440   happened because you used your operating system's "copy" command to
3441   copy one working copy into the current one.</p>
3442 <p>
3443   The quick and dirty solution is to delete all <tt>.svn</tt>
3444   directories contained in the directory you're trying to add; this
3445   will let the "add" command complete.  If you're using Unix, this
3446   command will delete <tt>.svn</tt> directories
3447   under <tt>dir</tt>:</p>
3448 <pre>
3449   find dir -type d -name .svn -exec rm -rf {} \;
3450 </pre>
3451 <p>However, you should ask yourself <em>why</em> you made this copy;
3452   and you should ensure that by adding this directory, you won't be
3453   making an unwanted copy of it in your repository.
3454 </p>
3455
3456 </div>
3457
3458 <div class="h3" id="slow-private-svnserve" title="slow-private-svnserve">
3459 <h3>Accessing non-public repositories
3460     via svnserve is really slow sometimes.</h3>
3461
3462 <p>This often happens when APR is compiled to use <tt>/dev/random</tt>
3463 and the server is unable to gather enough entropy.  If Subversion is the
3464 only application using APR on the server, you can safely recompile APR
3465 with the <tt>--with-devrandom=/dev/urandom</tt> option passed to
3466 <tt>configure</tt>.  This should <b>not</b> be done on systems that use
3467 APR for other processes, however, as it could make other services
3468 insecure.</p>
3469
3470 </div>
3471
3472 <div class="h3" id="ssl-negotiation-error" title="ssl-negotiation-error">
3473 <h3>When performing Subversion operations involving a lot of data over
3474     SSL, I get the error <tt>SSL negotiation failed: SSL error:
3475     decryption failed or bad record mac</tt>.</h3>
3476
3477 <p>This can occur due to a problem with OpenSSL 0.9.8.  Downgrading to
3478 an older version (or possibly upgrading to a newer version) is known
3479 to fix this issue.</p>
3480
3481 </div>
3482
3483 <div class="h3" id="broken-subclipse" title="broken-subclipse">
3484 <h3>I get an error that says "This client is too old".</h3>
3485
3486 You're using both an older (pre-1.4) version of the Subversion
3487 command-line client, and Subclipse.  You recently upgraded Subclipse,
3488 and now your command-line client says
3489
3490 <pre>
3491 svn: This client is too old to work with working copy
3492 '/path/to/your/working/copy'; please get a newer Subversion client
3493 </pre>
3494
3495 This happened because Subversion's working-copy format changed
3496 incompatibly&mdash;the new version of Subclipse upgraded your working
3497 copy, so now your command-line program, which is old, cannot read it.
3498 (This problem isn't specific to Subclipse; it would also have happened
3499 if you'd used a command-line client that was 1.4 or newer, along with
3500 your older command-line client.)
3501
3502 The fix is simply to upgrade your command-line client to 1.4 or newer.
3503
3504 </div>
3505
3506 <div class="h3" id="switch-problems" title="switch-problems">
3507 <h3>Why doesn't <tt>svn switch</tt> work in some cases?</h3>
3508
3509 <p>In some cases where there are unversioned (and maybe ignored) items
3510 in the working copy, <tt>svn switch</tt> can get an error.  The switch
3511 stops, leaving the working copy half-switched.</p>
3512
3513 <p>Unfortunately, if you take the wrong corrective action you can end
3514 up with an unusable working copy.  Sometimes with these situations,
3515 the user is directed to do <tt>svn cleanup</tt>.  But the <tt>svn
3516 cleanup</tt> may also encounter an error.  See <a
3517 href="http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2505">issue
3518 #2505</a>.</p>
3519
3520 <p>The user can manually remove the directories or files causing
3521 the problem, and then run <tt>svn cleanup</tt>, and continue the switch, to
3522 recover from this situation.</p>
3523
3524 <p>Note that a switch from a <i>pristine</i> clean checkout always
3525 works without error.  There are three ways of working if you are using
3526 <tt>svn switch</tt> as part of your development process:</p>
3527
3528 <ol>
3529
3530 <li>Fully clean your working copy of unversioned (including ignored)
3531 files before switching. <br/><b>WARNING! This deletes all unversioned
3532 dirs/files. Be VERY sure that you do not need anything that will be
3533 removed.</b>
3534
3535 <blockquote>
3536 <div><pre><code>
3537 # Check and delete svn unversioned files:
3538 svn status --no-ignore | grep '^[I?]' | sed 's/^[I?]//'
3539 svn status --no-ignore | grep '^[I?]' | sed 's/^[I?]//' | xargs rm -rf
3540 </code></pre></div>
3541 </blockquote>
3542
3543 </li>
3544
3545 <li>Keep a <i>pristine</i> clean checkout. Update that, then copy it,
3546 and switch the copy when a switch to another branch is desired.</li>
3547
3548 <li>Live dangerously :).
3549  Switch between branches without cleaning up BUT if you encounter a switch error
3550  know that you have to recover from this properly.
3551  Delete the unversioned files and the directory that the error was reported on.
3552  Then "svn cleanup" if needed and then resume the switch.
3553  Unless you delete <em>all</em> unversioned files, you may have to repeat this
3554  process multiple times.</li>
3555
3556 </ol>
3557
3558 <p>Some examples are detailed
3559 <a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2505">here in issue 2505</a>.
3560 The problem is that the svn client plays it
3561 safe and doesn't want to delete anything unversioned.
3562 </p>
3563
3564 <p>Two specific examples are detailed here to illustrate a problem like this.
3565 There are also other svn switch errors, not covered here, which you
3566   can avoid by switching only from a <em>pristine</em> checkout.</p>
3567
3568 <ol>
3569
3570 <li>If any directory has been moved or renamed between the branches, then
3571 anything unversioned will cause a problem.
3572 In this case, you'll see this error:
3573 <br/>
3574 <blockquote>
3575 <div><pre><code>
3576 wc/$ svn switch $SVNROOT/$project/branches/$ticket-xxx
3577 svn: Won't delete locally modified directory '&lt;dir&gt;'
3578 svn: Left locally modified or unversioned files
3579 </code></pre></div>
3580 </blockquote>
3581 <p>Removing all unversioned files, and continuing the switch will recover from this.</p>
3582 </li>
3583
3584 <li>If a temporary build file has ever been added and removed, then a switch
3585 in a repository with that unversioned file (likely after a build) fails.
3586 You'll see the same error:
3587
3588 <blockquote>
3589 <div><pre><code>
3590 wc/$ svn switch $SVNROOT/$project/branches/$ticket-xxx
3591 svn: Won't delete locally modified directory '&lt;dir&gt;'
3592 svn: Left locally modified or unversioned files
3593 </code></pre></div>
3594 </blockquote>
3595
3596 <p>In this case, just removing the unversioned items will not recover.
3597 A cleanup fails, but svnswitch directs you to run "svn cleanup".</p>
3598
3599 <blockquote>
3600 <div><pre><code>
3601 wc/$ svn switch $SVNROOT/$project/branches/$ticket-xxx
3602 svn: Directory '&lt;dir&gt;/.svn' containing working copy admin area is missing
3603 wc/$ svn cleanup
3604 svn: '&lt;dir&gt;' is not a working copy directory
3605 wc/$ svn switch $SVNROOT/$project/branches/$ticket-xxx
3606 svn: Working copy '.' locked
3607 svn: run 'svn cleanup' to remove locks (type 'svn help cleanup' for details)
3608 </code></pre></div>
3609 </blockquote>
3610
3611 <p>Removing the directory (and all other unversioned files, to prevent
3612  "switch" from breaking on a similar error repeatedly), and continuing the switch
3613  will recover from this.</p>
3614 </li>
3615
3616 </ol>
3617
3618 <p>The TortoiseSVN cleanup error is a bit different.  You might encounter this:
3619 </p>
3620 <blockquote>
3621 <div><pre><code>
3622 Subversion reported an error while doing a cleanup!
3623 &lt;dir&gt;/&lt;anotherdir&gt; is not a working copy directory
3624 </code></pre></div>
3625 </blockquote>
3626
3627 <p>In each case here, the "svn switch" breaks leaving you with a half-switched
3628 working copy. "svn status" will show items with S for switched items (different
3629  from top directory), ! for directories with problems, and ~ for the files that are
3630  the problem (and with maybe L for locked). Like this:</p>
3631 <blockquote>
3632 <div><pre><code>
3633 wc/$ svn status
3634 !      .
3635 !      &lt;dir&gt;
3636     S  &lt;switched_things&gt;
3637 ~      &lt;dir&gt;/&lt;thing_that_is_now_unversioned&gt;
3638 </code></pre></div>
3639 </blockquote>
3640
3641 </div>
3642
3643 <div class="h3" id="long-paths" title="long-paths">
3644 <h3>In Windows, when doing an update with the command-line client, I
3645     get an error saying "The system cannot find the path specified"
3646     and suggesting that my working copy might be corrupt.  But I can
3647     update with TortoiseSVN just fine.  What's going on?</h3>
3648
3649 <p>A careful examination of the Windows API documentation regarding <a
3650 href="http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365247.aspx#maximum_path_length"
3651 >Naming a File</a> reveals the most common reason why this happens. In
3652 short, you can address significantly longer path names when using the
3653 Unicode versions of the Windows path functions, and providing absolute
3654 path specifiers instead of relative path specifiers.  Fortunately, the
3655 Apache Portable Runtime (APR) library that Subversion uses
3656 transparently converts absolute paths (like
3657 <tt>C:\WorkingCopy\file.txt</tt>) into the form required by the
3658 Windows APIs (<tt>\\?\C:\WorkingCopy\file.txt</tt>), and back again.
3659 <em>Unfortunately</em>, you only get these long-path benefits when
3660 using absolute paths.</p>
3661
3662 <p>To see if path length is the reason for the problem you're seeing,
3663 try providing an absolute target path to the Subversion command-line
3664 client instead of a relative one (or none at all).  In other words,
3665 instead of doing this:</p>
3666
3667 <blockquote>
3668 <div><pre><code>
3669 C:\> svn up WorkingCopy
3670 </code></pre></div>
3671 </blockquote>
3672
3673 <p>or this:</p>
3674
3675 <blockquote>
3676 <div><pre><code>
3677 C:\> cd C:\WorkingCopy
3678 C:\WorkingCopy> svn up
3679 </code></pre></div>
3680 </blockquote>
3681
3682 <p>do this:</p>
3683
3684 <blockquote>
3685 <div><pre><code>
3686 C:\> svn update C:\WorkingCopy
3687 </code></pre></div>
3688 </blockquote>
3689
3690 <p>If the problem goes away, congratulations &mdash; you've hit a
3691 Windows path length limitation.  And now you know the workaround.</p>
3692
3693 <p><strong>Why does this problem not affect TortoiseSVN?</strong>
3694 Because TortoiseSVN <em>always</em> provides absolute paths to the
3695 Subversion APIs.</p>
3696
3697 <p><strong>Why, then, does the Subversion command-line client not
3698 always convert its input into absolute paths and use those?</strong>
3699 The Subversion developers have been operating under the principle
3700 that, for reasons of user experience, the display of paths in the
3701 tool's output should match the syntax of the paths provided as input.
3702 And while conversion to an absolute path from a relative one is a
3703 fairly trivial operation, the reverse transformation is fraught with
3704 complexities.  (In other words, it's a hard problem not high on our
3705 priority list.)</p>
3706
3707 </div>
3708
3709 <div class="h3"
3710      id="working-copy-format-change" title="working-copy-format-change">
3711 <h3>I got an error saying "This client is too old to work with working
3712     copy '...' ".  How can I fix it without upgrading Subversion?</h3>
3713
3714 <p>Sometimes the working copy metadata format changes incompatibly
3715 between minor releases.  For example, say you have a working copy
3716 created with Subversion 1.4.4, but one day you decide to try out
3717 Subversion 1.5.0.  Afterwards, you attempt to switch back to 1.4.4,
3718 but it doesn't work&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;it just gives the above
3719 error.</p>
3720
3721 <p>This is because 1.5.0 upgraded your working copy format to support
3722 some new features (in this case, changelists, the keep-local flag, and
3723 variable-depth directories).  Although 1.4.4 doesn't know anything
3724 about these new features, it can at least recognize that the working
3725 copy format has been upgraded to something higher than it can
3726 handle.</p>
3727
3728 <p>1.5.0 upgraded the working copy for a good reason: it realizes that
3729 1.4.4 does not know about these new features, and that if 1.4.4 were
3730 to meddle with the working copy metadata now, important information
3731 might be lost, possibly causing corruption (see <a
3732 href="http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2961" >issue
3733 #2961</a>, for example).</p>
3734
3735 <p>But this automatic upgrade behavior can be annoying, if you just
3736 want to try out a new release of Subversion without installing it
3737 permanently.  For this reason, we distribute a script that can
3738 downgrade working copies when doing so is safe:</p>
3739
3740 <blockquote>
3741 <p><a
3742 href="http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/tools/client-side/change-svn-wc-format.py"
3743 >http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/tools/client-side/change-svn-wc-format.py</a></p>
3744 </blockquote>
3745
3746 <p>Run that script with the "<tt>--help</tt>" option to see how to use
3747 it.  As future versions of Subversion are released, we will try to
3748 keep this FAQ entry up-to-date with potential downgrade scenarios and
3749 their implications.</p>
3750
3751 </div>
3752
3753 <div class="h3"
3754      id="relocation-against-local-symbol"
3755      title="relocation-against-local-symbol">
3756 <h3>I got an error saying  "relocation R_X86_64_32 against `a local symbol'
3757     can not be used when making a shared object" when building the Neon
3758     library on 64-bit Linux.</h3>
3759
3760 <p>The Neon library, used for communication between a Subversion server and
3761 client over HTTP, is usually built as a static library.  But it is
3762 subsequently linked into a different shared library.  This causes an error
3763 during the build process on 64-bit AMD systems similar to this:
3764
3765 <blockquote>
3766 <div><pre><code>
3767 subversion-1.4.6/neon/src/.libs/libneon.a(ne_request.o): relocation R_X86_64_32
3768 against `a local symbol' can not be used when making a shared object;
3769 recompile with -fPIC
3770 /home/jrandom/subversion/subversion-1.4.6/neon/src/.libs/libneon.a: could not
3771 read symbols: Bad value
3772 </code></pre></div>
3773 </blockquote>
3774
3775 <p>There was a
3776 <a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/ReadMsg?listName=dev&msgNo=119669">
3777 thread</a> on the developers' list about this.</p>
3778
3779 <p>The solution is to supply the "--enable-shared" option to Subversion's
3780 configure script.</p>
3781
3782 </div>
3783
3784 </div>
3785
3786 <div class="h2" id="developer-questions" title="developer-questions">
3787 <h2>Developer questions:</h2>
3788 <p/>
3789
3790 <div class="h3" id="ramdisk-tests" title="ramdisk-tests">
3791 <h3>How do I run the regression tests in a
3792     RAM disk?</h3>
3793
3794 <p>Test execution can be dramatically sped up by keeping Subversion
3795 test data on a RAM disk.  On a Linux system, you can mount a RAM disk
3796 on the fly with the command:</p>
3797
3798 <blockquote>
3799 <div><code>mount -t tmpfs tmpfs
3800 /path/to/src/subversion/tests/cmdline/svn-test-work
3801 -o uid=$USER,mode=770,size=32m</code></div>
3802 </blockquote>
3803
3804 <p>Or, for a more permanent solution, add lines like the following in
3805 your <code>/etc/fstab</code> file:</p>
3806
3807 <blockquote>
3808 <div><code>tmpfs  /path/to/src/svn/subversion/tests/cmdline/svn-test-work
3809 tmpfs  defaults,user,noauto,exec,size=32m</code></div>
3810 </blockquote>
3811
3812 <p>The minimum required size for testing ramdisk is approximately 700MB.
3813 However, flagging your test targets for cleanup dramatically reduces
3814 the space requirements (as shown in the example configuration above),
3815 and thus your memory usage.  Cleanup means more I/O, but since test
3816 data is in-memory, there will be no performance degradation.  Example:</p>
3817
3818 <blockquote><div><code>
3819 make check CLEANUP=true
3820 </code></div></blockquote>
3821
3822 <p>See <a href="http://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2003-02/0068.shtml"
3823 >http://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2003-02/0068.shtml</a> for the
3824 original authoritative discussion on use of RAM disks.</p>
3825
3826 </div>
3827
3828
3829 <div class="h3" id="dynamic-exe-debugging" title="dynamic-exe-debugging">
3830
3831 <h3>How do I run a debugger on dynamic Subversion binaries without
3832     having to install them?</h3>
3833
3834 <p>Before the <code>make install</code> step on unix-y systems,
3835 dynamically built "executables" in a Subversion source tree are
3836 actually libtool-generated shell scripts which re-link and run the
3837 real binary.  As shown below, this complicates debugging:</p>
3838
3839 <blockquote>
3840 <div><code>subversion$ gdb subversion/svn/svn</code></div>
3841 <div><code>... "/path/to/subversion/subversion/svn/svn": not in
3842 executable format: File format not recognized</code></div>
3843 </blockquote>
3844
3845 <p>While this can be worked around by building using the
3846 <code>--disable-shared</code> argument to configure to statically link
3847 the binaries, or installing them and pointing your debugger at the
3848 installed version, it's often necessary or more expedient to be able
3849 to debug them right within your source tree.</p>
3850
3851 <p>To do so, edit the last <code>exec</code> statement in the shell
3852 script to run the real binary in your debugger.  With gdb, this
3853 amounts to replacing <code>exec "$progdir/$progname"</code> with
3854 <code>exec gdb --args "$progdir/$progname"</code>.</p>
3855
3856 <p>This trick is also very useful when applied to the
3857 libtool-generated shell scripts for the white box tests.</p>
3858
3859 </div>
3860
3861
3862 <div class="h3" id="avoiding-compiler-inlining"
3863 title="avoiding-compiler-inlining">
3864
3865 <h3>How do I run a debugger on Subversion binaries without compiler
3866     inlining obfuscating the source?</h3>
3867
3868 <p>By default, gcc will often optimize away private variables and
3869 functions, inlining the associated operations.  This can complicate
3870 stepping through the code in a debugger.</p>
3871
3872 <p>Work around this by turning off optimization during the
3873 <code>make</code> step on unix-y systems:</p>
3874
3875 <blockquote>
3876 <div><code>subversion$ make EXTRA_CFLAGS=-O0</code></div>
3877 </blockquote>
3878
3879 <p>(That's "dash ohh zero".)  Alternately, you can make this change
3880 more permanent by running <code>configure</code> as follows:</p>
3881
3882 <blockquote>
3883 <div><code>subversion$ ./configure --enable-debug</code></div>
3884 </blockquote>
3885
3886 <p>For a production install, remember to undo this operation before
3887 installing Subversion from source, by re-running <code>make</code> or
3888 <code>configure</code> without the extra flag.</p>
3889
3890 </div>
3891
3892
3893 </div>
3894
3895 <div class="h2" id="references" title="references">
3896 <h2>References:</h2>
3897 <p/>
3898
3899 <div class="h3" id="http-methods" title="http-methods">
3900 <h3>What are all the HTTP methods Subversion
3901     uses?</h3>
3902
3903 <p>The Subversion client speaks a subset the WebDAV/DeltaV protocol to
3904   the mod_dav_svn server module.  The short answer is:</p>
3905
3906 <pre>
3907      OPTIONS, PROPFIND, GET, REPORT,
3908      MKACTIVITY, PROPPATCH, PUT, CHECKOUT, MKCOL,
3909      MOVE, COPY, DELETE, LOCK, UNLOCK, MERGE
3910 </pre>
3911
3912 <p>The details of the protocol are documented here:</p>
3913
3914 <a href="http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/notes/webdav-protocol">http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/notes/webdav-protocol</a>
3915
3916
3917
3918 </div>
3919
3920
3921 <div class="h3" id="bikeshed" title="bikeshed">
3922 <h3>What's a 'bikeshed'?</h3>
3923
3924 <p>See Poul-Henning Kamp's post to freebsd-hackers: <a href="http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/misc.html#BIKESHED-PAINTING">http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/misc.html#BIKESHED-PAINTING</a>.
3925 </p>
3926
3927 </div>
3928
3929
3930 <div class="h3" id="pronounce" title="pronounce">
3931 <h3>How do you pronounce "Subversion"?</h3>
3932
3933 <p>Jim Blandy, who gave Subversion both its name and repository
3934 design, pronounces "Subversion" <a href="http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn-committers/trunk/sounds/pronunciation/index.html">"Subversion"</a>.
3935 </p>
3936
3937 </div>
3938
3939
3940 <div class="h3" id="baton" title="baton">
3941 <h3>What's a 'baton'?</h3>
3942
3943 <p>Throughout Subversion's source code there are many references to
3944 'baton' objects.  These are just <tt>void *</tt> datastructures that
3945 provide context to a function.  In other APIs, they're often called
3946 <tt>void *ctx</tt> or <tt>void *userdata</tt>  Subversion
3947 developers call the structures "batons" because they're passed around
3948 quite a bit.</p>
3949
3950 </div>
3951
3952
3953 <div class="h3" id="def-wedged-repository" title="def-wedged-repository">
3954 <h3>What do you mean when you say that
3955     repository is 'wedged'?</h3>
3956
3957 <p>wedged repository:</p>
3958
3959 <blockquote>
3960 <p>A Subversion repository consists of two different internal parts, a
3961 working compartment and a storage compartment.  A wedged repository is
3962 a repository where the working compartment is unaccessible for some
3963 reason, but the storage compartment is intact.  Therefore, a wedged
3964 repository has not suffered any loss of data, but the working
3965 compartment has to be corrected before you can access the
3966 repository. See <a href="#stuck-bdb-repos">this</a> entry for details
3967 how to do that.</p>
3968 </blockquote>
3969
3970 <p>corrupted repository:</p>
3971
3972 <blockquote>
3973 <p>A corrupted Subversion repository is a repository where the storage
3974 compartment has been damaged, and therefore there is some degree of
3975 real data loss in the repository.</p>
3976 </blockquote>
3977
3978 <p>You might also like to check The Jargon File's definition for
3979 <a href="http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/W/wedged.html">'wedged'</a>.
3980 </p>
3981
3982 </div>
3983
3984 </div>
3985
3986 </div>
3987 </body>
3988 </html>