Other Subversion questions

Other issues that may come up using Subversion.

• When I access a repository using svn+ssh, my password is not cached in ~/.subversion/auth/. How do I avoid having to type it so often?
  SSH has its own passphrases and its own authentication-caching scheme that is external to Subversion. As a result, SSH must be set up independently of Subversion.
• Why doesn't the $Revision$ keyword expand to the file's current revision, instead of the file's last-changed revision?
  Subversion increments the revision number of the repository as a whole; it can't expand any keyword to be that number. To do this would require to search and possibly modify every file in your working copy on every update and commit.
• How come svn up subdir does not work when I check out a directory non-recursively (with -N) to reveal certain subdirectories?
  Subversion 1.5 supports sparse directories. For Subversion 1.4.x, the workaround is to try checking out separate subdirectories of the repository and manually nesting your working copies.
• I've contributed a patch to a project and the patch added a new file, how come svn update does not work?
  The reason that you received this error is that you still have your local copy of the file in your working copy.
• Why am I having trouble doing write operations to a Subversion repository over a network?
  This sometimes happens when the REPOS/dav/ directory is not writable by the httpd process. Check the permissions to ensure Apache can write to the dav/ directory (and to db/).
• I run Apache 1.x right now, and can't switch to Apache 2.0 just to serve Subversion repositories. Does that mean I can't run a Subversion server?
  No, you can run svnserve as a Subversion server. It works extremely well.
• I heard that Subversion is an Apache extension. What does it use for servers?
  No, Subversion is a set of libraries. It comes with a command-line client that uses them.
• Do I have to set up Apache to use Subversion?
  The short answer is no. The long answer: if you just want to access a repository, then you only need to build a Subversion client. If you want to host a networked repository, then you need to set up either Apache2 or an "svnserve".
• Why does the svn revert require an explicit target?
  Subversion places a very high priority on protecting your data, and not just your versioned data. Making the svn revert command require an explicit target - even if that target is just '.' - is one way of accomplishing this.
• What is the "dump/load cycle" people sometimes talk about when upgrading a Subversion server?
  Subversion's repository database schema has changed occasionally during development. Old repositories, created with a pre-1.0 development version of Subversion, may require the following operation when upgrading. If a schema change happens between Subversion releases X and Y, then repository administrators upgrading to Y must do the steps listed.
• Every time users try to access my repository, the process just hangs. Is my repository corrupt?
  Your repository is not corrupt, nor is your data lost. If your process accesses the repository directly (mod_dav_svn, svnlook, svnadmin, or if you access a file:// URL), then it's using Berkeley DB to access your data. Berkeley DB is a journaling system, meaning that it logs everything it is about to do before it does so. If your process is interrupted (Control-C, or segfault), then a lockfile is left behind, along with a logfile describing unfinished business. Any other process that attempts to access the database will just hang, waiting for the lockfile to disappear. To awaken your repository, you need to ask Berkeley DB to either finish the work, or rewind the database to a previous state that is known to be consistent. WARNING: You can seriously corrupt your repository if you run recover and another process accesses the repository.
• SVN proxy questions
  Using proxy settings with Subversion.
• LDAP server questions
  Common questions about using LDAP servers with Subversion.
• Switching from CVS to SVN
  Common questions about cvs tasks in Subversion
• SVN files and folders
  Questions about accesing files and folders in Subversion.