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