Re: Subversion questions

In a message dated: Wed, 21 May 2003 18:22:28 +0200
Olivier Fourdan said:

>I'm currently evaluating Subvsersion and I have a couple of questions
>that I could not find an answer myself:

Did you check the Subversion book? It's available in source form if
you downloaded the source tree, or on-line at the Subversion website.
It should contain the answers to all your questions.
(It may *not* contain all the answers, but it *should* :)

>1) Does migrating the repository data from an architecture to another
>one requires any special procedure ? For example, what if someone hosts
>his repository on a Win32 (or MacOS X) system and later wants to migrate
>to a Linux or UNIX server for hosting his data under subversion.

You should be able to simply 'svnadmin dump' the repo on one system,
redirect to a file, then 'svnadmin load' that file on the other
system.

>2) Does upgrading Subversion requires (or will require in a near future)
>any special procedure for the existing repositories ? Basically, if
>someone uses Subversion right now, does a migration is to be planned
>when Subversion 1.0 comes out, for example ?

My understanding is that if you keep up with the releases, there is
nothing to worry about, and that a best effort toward
backward compatibility is made for at least one revision. So, if you
are running 0.22 and svn 0.23 is released, then your safe. If you
continue on with 0.22, and 0.27 is released, there are no guarantees.

However, this should also be solved using the svnadmin dump/load
procedure if I followed the earlier discussion on this correctly.

>3) Backuping the server data (Berkely DB) requires a shutdown of the
>database or the backup can be performed with Subversion being running
>and accessed ?

Well, Berkeley DB is not like a typical RDBMS in that there's a
process to shut down or start up. You can copy the db files anytime
you want, however, you may wish to guarantee that there is no
activity operating on those files when the copy is made. So, it is
recommended that you prevent access to the Subversion server while
the backups are being performed. This may be as simple as shutting
down Apache, or, as complex as preventing SSH access to the system as
well.

>4) How does Subversion scale ? Can it support (or will it support) huge trees ?

Can you define 'huge' trees? There are some large repositories
listed on the Subversion website on the order of 1+GB. There is at
least one which is over 7GB. Is that large by your definition?

>Any help will be highly welcome.
>Thanks in advance,
>
>PS: Please CC me on the answers, I'm not subscribed to any list.

The best way to learn about Subversion is to use it and to subscribe
to this list. I highly recommend it.

-- 
Seeya,
Paul
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