SMITASIN/DOCS/
Subversion (SVN)

A lot of this is stolen from my colleague Craig Leres' SVN notes page, or from work he's done, so all credit goes to him.

Purpose


This is a quick and dirty guide to Subersion (SVN), a version control system. For those familiar with RCS and CVS, the two major differences with SVN are:

Comparing basic RCS and SVN workflows


This is an example workflow of editing a file:

# RCS
co -l example.conf
vi example.conf
rcs diff
ci -u example.conf        

# SVN
vi example.conf
svn diff
svn commit -m "This is a comment"
svn update

Setting up SVN


On CentOS, the installation is pretty easy. As you would expect:

yum install svn
However, putting your files into SVN is a little more involved than RCS.

# RCS
ci example.conf
co -l example.conf        
ci -u example.conf

# SVN
## Create the repo directories
mkdir /usr/src/svn
mkdir /usr/src/svn/example

## Add the repo directories to SVN
svnadmin create --fs-type fsfs /usr/src/svn/example
svn mkdir file:///usr/src/svn/example/trunk -m ''
svn mkdir file:///usr/src/svn/example/branches -m ''
svn mkdir file:///usr/src/svn/example/tags -m ''

## Go to the parent directory of your working files
cd /var/tmp/

## Move your working files to a backup directory
mv example/ example_bak/

## Check-out from the repo a folder with the name of your working directory
svn checkout file:///usr/src/svn/example/trunk example

## Copy the contents from your backup directory to the working directory
cp -R example_bak/* example/
cd example

## add its contents to SVN, commit it, and update the working directory
svn add
svn commit -m "Initial check-in"
svn update

Alternatively, I created a little script that automates the above. It's not great, but it mostly works: Download: svncheckin.sh

SVN Hooks - Scripts that run on actions


One neat feature of SVN is the ability to use hooks to run scripts whenever an action is performed. SVN includes some templates in the repo directory's hooks directory:

post-commit.tmpl
post-lock.tmpl
post-revprop-change.tmpl
post-unlock.tmpl
pre-commit.tmpl
pre-lock.tmpl
pre-revprop-change.tmpl
pre-unlock.tmpl
start-commit.tmpl
If you rename these to drop the .tmpl extension, SVN will run those scripts when their respective actions occur. For example, post-commit will run after you commit to the repo. You may find it useful to just move these into a template sub-directory (i.e. /usr/src/svn/example/hooks/templates).

SVN Notify - Send Emails on Commits


SVN Notify is a neat little perl module you can use to email you the diff, comments, and user info whenever a commit is performed. Below are instructions on how to install it on CentOS: 

yum install perl
perl -MCPAN -e 'install SVN::Notify'
Once SVN Notify is installed, you'll need to create hooks to use it. Here's a very simple example: 
# /usr/src/svn/example/hooks/post-commit
#!/bin/sh
/usr/local/bin/svnnotify \
    --subject-prefix "SVN COMMIT" \
    --revision $2 \
    --subject-cx \
    --with-diff \
    --repos-path $1 \
    --to "[email protected]"
When you commit something to the repo, you'll then get an email such as below: 
Subject: SVN COMMIT[19] trunk/example.conf: This is a test commit.
Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2016 10:57:42 -0700 (PDT)
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]

Revision: 19
Author:   root
Date:     2016-07-16 10:57:42 -0700 (Sat, 16 Jul 2016)
Log Message:
-----------
This is a test commit.

Modified Paths:
--------------
    trunk/example.conf

Modified: trunk/example.conf
===================================================================
--- trunk/example.conf	2016-07-16 00:54:58 UTC (rev 18)
+++ trunk/example.conf	2016-07-16 17:57:42 UTC (rev 19)
@@ -16,3 +16,5 @@
+
+# This is just a test comment I added to a file.

More advanced SVN Notify


You'll notice in the previous example it just shows "root" as the author. That's okay if you're the only person working on the code, but if you have multiple people, it'd be nice to see who the actual author was. Below is a more sophisticated example of the post-commit hook created by Craig Leres to identify the username of the person performing the commit, even if they're su'd to root: 

#!/bin/sh
REPOS="$1"
REV="$2"

# Configurables
dn="/var/tmp/example"
watcher="[email protected]"
extras=""

PATH="/usr/local/bin:${PATH}"
export PATH

hostname="`hostname`"
shostname="${hostname%.example.com}"
subject="[${shostname}:${dn}]"

# Determine and set the pid of the parent
setppid()
{
        local _pid _ppid _cmd

        _pid="$1"
        shift

        if [ -z "${_pid}" ]; then
                echo "usage: setppid PID" 1>&2
                exit 1
        fi

        _ppid=`/bin/ps -o ppid ${_pid} | fgrep -v 'PPID'`
        if [ -n "${_ppid}" ]; then
                _cmd="PPID=${_ppid}"
                eval "export ${_cmd}"
        fi
}

# Determine and set the login name of the parent process
setuser()
{
        local _ppid _key _cmd _result

        _ppid="$1"
        shift
        if [ -z "${_ppid}" ]; then
                echo "usage: setuser PID" 1>&2
                exit 1
        fi

        for _key in SUDO_USER USER; do
                _result=`/bin/ps wwe${_ppid} |
                    /usr/bin/fmt -1 |
                    /bin/egrep "^\s*${_key}="`
                if [ -n "${_result}" ]; then
                        _cmd="`echo ${_result} | sed -e 's/.*=/PUSER=/'`"
                        eval "export ${_cmd}"
                        break
                fi
        done
}

# Set the svn:author if we can figure out who this is
if [ -n "${PPID}" ]; then
        # First look in the environment of our parent
        setuser ${PPID}

        # If that fails look in the environment of our grandparent
        if [ -n "${PPID}" -a \( -z "${PUSER}" -o "${PUSER}" = "root" \) ]; then
                setppid ${PPID}

                # Try one last time (great-grandparent)
                if [ -n "${PPID}" -a \
                    \( -z "${PUSER}" -o "${PUSER}" = "root" \) ]; then
                        setppid ${PPID}
                fi
                if [ -n "${PPID}" ]; then
                        setuser ${PPID}
                fi
        fi

        if [ -n "${PUSER}" ]; then
                extras="${extras} --from ${PUSER}"
                dn=/tmp/post-commit.$$
                svn checkout file://${REPOS} ${dn} --depth empty
                svn propset --revprop -r${REV} svn:author ${PUSER} ${dn}
                rm -rf ${dn}
        fi
fi

/usr/local/bin/svnnotify \
    --subject-prefix "${subject}" \
    --revision $REV \
    --subject-cx \
    --with-diff \
    --repos-path $REPOS \
    --to "${watcher}" \
    ${extras}
And the email doesn't look too different, but you'll notice some extra info is included: 
Subject: [server1:/var/tmp/example][20] trunk/example.conf: Reverting test commit.
Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2016 10:58:46 -0700 (PDT)
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]

Revision: 20
Author:   myusername
Date:     2016-07-16 10:58:46 -0700 (Sat, 16 Jul 2016)
Log Message:
-----------
Reverting test commit.

Modified Paths:
--------------
    trunk/example.conf

Modified: trunk/example.conf
===================================================================
--- trunk/example.conf	2016-07-16 17:57:42 UTC (rev 19)
+++ trunk/example.conf	2016-07-16 17:58:46 UTC (rev 20)
@@ -16,5 +16,3 @@
-
-# TEST

2016-Jul-16