Version Control with Subversion - Login

Appendix A. Subversion Quick-StartGuideIf you're eager to get Subversion up and running (and you enjoy learning by experimentation),this appendix will show you how to create a repository, import code, and then check itback out again as a working copy. Along the way, we give links to the relevant chapters ofthis book.If you're new to the entire concept of version control or to the“copy-modify-merge” model used by both CVS and Subversion, you shouldread Chapter 1, Fundamental Concepts before going any further.Installing SubversionSubversion is built on a portability layer called APR—the Apache Portable Runtime library.The APR library provides all the interfaces that Subversion needs to function on differentoperating systems: disk access, network access, memory management, and so on. WhileSubversion is able to use Apache as one of its network server programs, its dependenceon APR does not mean that Apache is a required component. APR is a standalone libraryusable by any application. It does mean, however, that like Apache, Subversion clients andservers run on any operating system that the Apache httpd server runs on: Windows,Linux, all flavors of BSD, Mac OS X, NetWare, and others.The easiest way to get Subversion is to download a binary package built for your operatingsystem. Subversion's web site (http://subversion.tigris.org) often has these packages availablefor download, posted by volunteers. The site usually contains graphical installer packagesfor users of Microsoft operating systems. If you run a Unix-like operating system, youcan use your system's native package distribution system (RPMs, DEBs, the ports tree,etc.) to get Subversion.Alternatively, you can build Subversion directly from source code, though it's not always aneasy task. (If you're not experienced at building open source software packages, you'reprobably better off downloading a binary distribution instead!) From the Subversion website, download the latest source code release. After unpacking it, follow the instructions inthe INSTALL file to build it. Note that a released source package may not containeverything you need to build a command-line client capable of talking to a remote repository.Starting with Subversion 1.4 and later, the libraries Subversion depends on (apr, aprutil,and neon) are distributed in a separate source package suffixed with -deps. Theselibraries are now common enough that they may already be installed on your system. Ifnot, you'll need to unpack the dependency package into the same directory where you unpackedthe main Subversion source. Regardless, it's possible that you may want to fetchother optional dependencies such as Berkeley DB and possibly Apache httpd. If you wantto do a complete build, make sure you have all of the packages documented in the IN-STALL file.If you're one of those folks that likes to use bleeding-edge software, you can also get theSubversion source code from the Subversion repository in which it lives. Obviously, you'llneed to already have a Subversion client on hand to do this. But once you do, you cancheck out a working copy of the Subversion source repository from http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/:1$ svn checkout http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk subversion1 Note that the URL checked out in the example ends not with svn, but with a subdirectory thereof called trunk.See our discussion of Subversion's branching and tagging model for the reasoning behind this.360