Installation and Configuration of an SVN Repository

Introduction

If you want to use Subversion, the successor of CVS, you first need to install Apache 2.

Installation

Here are the packages to install:

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aptitude install subversion libapache2-svn subversion-tools

Configuration of SVN

Configuration of the module

Edit the "dav_svn" module:

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vi /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/dav_svn.conf

Then adapt this configuration for your needs (/etc/apache2/mods-enabled/dav_svn.conf):

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 <Location /svn>
      #When the client accesses /svn the URL will be handled
      #by the directives here, thus by subversion 

      #Loading the subversion module 
      DAV svn
      # Path to your repository
      SVNPath ''/usr/local/svn
      # Path if you have multiple repositories
      SVNParentPath ''/usr/local/svn

      #Here we request authentication with password
      #use htpasswd2 to create the file
      AuthType Basic
      AuthName ''"Subversion Repository"
      AuthUserFile ''/etc/apache2/dav_svn.passwd

      #Here we only request authentication for writing
      #operations on the repository.
      <LimitExcept GET PROPFIND OPTIONS REPORT>
          Require valid-user
      </LimitExcept>
 </Location>

Apache Configuration

Add this to your "VirtualHost" in Apache configuration (/etc/apache2/site-enabled/default):

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 <Directory /usr/local/svn>
     Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
     AllowOverride None
     Order allow,deny
     allow from all
 </Directory>

Access Definition

Next, we will create a file containing users authorized to connect:

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htpasswd -c /etc/apache2/dav_svn.passwd $USER

Setting up the repository

• Creating a repo (repository):

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svnadmin create /usr/local/svn/project

• Importing a project:

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svn import /home/$USER/project file:///usr/local/svn/project -m "initial import"

If everything went well, you should see this:

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Committed revision 1.

• Verification:

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svn ls file:///usr/local/svn/project

Starting the daemon

To start the daemon:

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svnserve -d -r /usr/local/svn/project --listen-port=3690

Set a listening port. 3690 is the default SVN port.

• Log status:

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svn log svn://localhost:3690

Usage

A repository within another repository

If, for example, you want to have a repository, then a folder inside it pointing to another repository, it's possible by going to the folder that will contain the other repositories, then running this command:

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svn propedit svn:externals .

Then, enter the name of the folder you want and the SVN address:

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lib svn://svnsrv/trunk/library

• lib: the folder containing this SVN repository
• svn://: the SVN address

Here's another example:

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Nagios         http://svn/admin/Production/Nagios

You can then save this configuration to make it permanent by doing a commit.

References

Setting up an SVN repo
Apache Subversion Documentation
SVN and auto updatable working copy Documentation
Subversion and Trac as Virtual-Hosts documentation