SVN on OS X

This is the programmer's quick and dirty reference to getting Subversion to work on Mac OS X. Remarkably there is little documentation on this and out of a need to document it for myself, I've decided that it might be worthwhile documenting in the blog.

Install Subversion

The first stage is to download the latest subversion package that Matt Ott has generously built for Mac users of SVN. To install the package just open the installer and follow the instructions. This should then install Subversion to: /usr/local/bin

Download svnX

svnX is an open source GUI for most features of the svn client binary.

This will allow you to browse your local working copies, commit changes, and perform basic SVN tasks such as filemerge, svn checkout, svn export, svn import, svn switch, svn copy, svn mkdir and svn delete.

Do a little reading

There is a great free book on using version control with Subversion (SVN), that has really deepened my understanding of how SVN works. Learning SVN in a GUI world is great, but it's important to understand the engine beneath the hood, and know how to use the command line syntax in the scenario that you are working on a server remotely through ssh.

Here are a few other good resources I've found on Subversion:

• Single User Subversion Tutorial
• Subversion Quick Reference
• Setting Up Subversion for One or Multiple Projects
• Also for those Windows users: How to Install and Use SVN

Since those links go pretty in depth with the setup and installation of SVN, I won't go in depth with the "how-to", but here are a few things I've found that are often omitted and are Mac specific.

Getting SVN to run on Apache

Rather than using the default version of Apache that is installed with Mac OS X, I prefer to use MAMP which stands for Macintosh Apache MYSQL PHP. MAMP installs a local server environment in a matter of seconds on your Mac OS X computer, be it PowerBook or iMac. Like similar packages from the Windows- and Linux-world, MAMP comes free of charge.

• Download MAMP

Once it's downloaded and installed you will want to include the necessary SVN modules into Apache, and create a location that ties to your SVN repository.

SVN over HTTPS

In the scenario where you are trying to access a SVN over HTTPS through the graphical tool svnX you will need to accept the SSL certificate by opening the terminal application, and typing:

svn list https://192.168.0.100/svn/name-of-repo

Permanently accept the certificate, and the credentials will be cached so you shouldn't have to do this again for the same server.

Recursive Removal of SVN Files

Though this is something that probably shouldn't happen under a well managed SVN, I have found at times that I want to put something under SVN that was previously under version control (Say CVS or an older SVN system). In this situation, a recursive delete of all the .svn folders and files is necessary. You could show all the hidden files and go into each folder manually and delete them, however, I much prefer the following approach:

First navigate to the root folder where you wish to begin the recursive delete in the terminal window. Then run the following command:

find . -name .svn -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rf

svn: '' is not a working copy directory

There have been a number of times where I have run into a lock or a conflict in the SVN. Normally running the command svn cleanup should fix this, but in the case it doesn’t here is how I have resolved it:

1. Open the terminal and cd into the directory you need to fix cd youroriginaldir
2. Run the command: find . -name .svn -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rf
3. Now move into the directory above it cd ..
4. Move the directory mv youroriginaldir yourtemporarydestinationdir
5. Now run: svn cleanup
6. Now run: svn update
7. Now run: svn st
8. You should see that there’s an ! mark next to youroriginaldir
9. To fix this: svn delete youroriginaldir
10. Now move your copy back: mv yourtemporarydestinationdir youroriginaldir
11. Now add it back to the repository: svn add youroriginaldir
12. Then commit the changes!

How to Move a Subversion Repository

To move your subversion repository from one server to another you have to enter a few commands. SSH into your server and then navigate to your svn root.

Then enter:

svnadmin dump /path/to/repository > name-of-repository.dmp

If the server file is quite large you can compress it using either tar, zip or whatever your favorite utility is.

tar -cf dump-file.tar name-of-repository.dmp

Then transfer the file to your server using ftp, or webdav.

ftp yourdomain.com
cd /place/to/dump/repository (remote change of directory)
lcd /home/user/path-to-repository (local change of directory)
put name-of-repository.tar


Now that it's on your server move it from wherever you uploaded it to, to the svn root.

mv name-of-repository.tar /path/to/new-repository

Now we need to move to that location, extract the dump from the tar file, and create a repository


cd /path/to/new/repository
tar -xvf name-of-repository.tar
svnadmin create name-of-repository

Then load the dump file
svnadmin load repository-name< repository-name.dmp

This method of moving the repository will work for transferring repositories between platforms (ie. Unix to Windows)

Configuring Apache 2.0 for Subversion and MAMP

The following is excerpted from Getting Control with Subversion and XCode from Apple. Although I have never integrated subversion into Apache myself, I believe this may help some users who wish to do this. I have integrated this with MAMP in steps that I think *should* work, but have not been tested.

To configure Apache 2.0 (or MAMP) for Subversion, complete the following steps:

1. Make the following change: in MAMP this is located within the Mamp/conf/apache/httpd.conf directory

* Add the path location for Subversion (SVN):

DAV svn
SVNPath /Applications/MAMP/repos
AuthType Basic
AuthName "YOUR AUTH NAME
AuthUserFile /Applications/MAMP/conf/svn-auth-file
Require valid-user

* Make sure to remove the whitespace between the braces in the location tag above
* Add Subversion modules to the end of the Modules section:

LoadModule dav_svn_module modules/mod_dav_svn.so
LoadModule authz_svn_module modules/mod_authz_svn.so

You need to download the MAMP SVN modules (zip) and place them in the modules folder of Apache. You can do this by clicking on the MAMP folder and then navigating to Library&#rsquo;modules and copying the files from the zip.

For this to work you will need to get MAMP 1.7 and Subversion 1.4.5.

Next, create a file called svn-auth-file in /Applications/MAMP/conf/subversion using this command:
/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/htpasswd -c /Applications/MAMP/conf/svn-auth-file username
(Thanks to Sam le Pirate for the comment)

Restart MAMP and you should be good to go.

Installing WebSVN

At WebSVN they offer an easy-to-use Web-based interface to your Subversion repositories. (At the time of this writing, the latest stable version of WebSVN was version 1.61 [WebSVN_161.tar.gz].)

To install WebSVN, complete the following steps:

1. Open Terminal in Mac OS X, and then extract the package.
2. Move the files to the websvn directory using the following command:
   
tar xvfz WebSVN_161.tar.gz
mkdir /Volumes/Storage/Apps/MAMP/htdocs/websvn (or wherever you have mamp located)
mv WebSVN/* /Volumes/Storage/Apps/MAMP/htdocs/websvn

3. Point your browser to http://localhost:8888/websvn/index.php to browse your Subversion repository with WebSVN.