Class 12 – Common Command-Line Subversion Commands

Here are some of the most common Subversion commands that you may one day run on the server, which uses a Linux operating system.  Most of the time, your SVN client, like TortoiseSVN or SvnX, will handle these things for you.  But here are the commands for your reference anyway, in case you one day consider yourself something of a server administrator.

Note 1: These examples use “$SVNREP_DIR” in place of the full path from the server root to the folder on the server where your repository is stored.  And “myproject” is in place of your project’s name.

Note 2: Also, these examples show how to run the commands on the same server that stores the repository.  If for some reason, you are running them on a different computer than the one that stores the repository, you can replace the file:///somefolder/ urls with an absolutely http://someurl.com/somefolder/ path.

//command to create a repository
svnadmin create $SVNREP_DIR/myproject

//command to create the layout of the repository
svn mkdir -m "layout creation" file:///$SVNREP_DIR/myproject/trunk file:///$SVNREP_DIR/myproject/tags file:///$SVNREP_DIR/myproject/branches

//do an initial import of your project into the repository
cd ~/myproject
svn import -m "initial import" . file:///$SVNREP_DIR/myproject/trunk

//check to make sure all files were imported
svn ls file:///$SVNREP_DIR/myproject/trunk/

//move your original project folder to a backup folder
mv myproject myproject.origin

//checkout the project from the repository
svn co file:///$SVNREP_DIR/myproject/trunk myproject

//make sure the files checked out successfully
ls myproject

Related posts:

1. Class 12 – Version Control Using Subversion
2. Class 12 – Intro to Using a Subversion Client