SolitaryGeek » Version Control

NautilusSVN – The TortoiseSVN for Linux users

James — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 09:46:13 +0000

TortoiseSVN is the dominant Subversion client for Windows. While there so many Subversion clients available, what makes TortoiseSVN special is it’s smooth integration with the Windows Explorer. As a result, working with your Subversion repository becomes super easy. When I switched completely from Windows to Ubuntu Linux, TortoiseSVN is one of the few applications I missed. Not anymore!

As I mentioned earlier, NautilusSVN attempts to be the TortoiseSVN for Linux. It looks like NautilusSVN is not yet available in the Ubuntu repositories but fortunately they had a “deb” package which I downloaded.

Though their documentation specifies that you don’t need anything extra, I had to install a few packages before proceeding to NautilusSVN. I installed the dependencies using the following command,

sudo apt-get install python-nautilus python-svn python-configobj

Then I installed the “deb” package using the command,

sudo dpkg -i nautilussvn*.deb

I had to just close and open Nautilus to see NautilusSVN in action.

All other SVN tasks can be performed by simply doing a “right click” at appropriate places in your working copy.

NautilusSVN has a commit window quite similar to TortoiseSVN.

NautilusSVN provides decent support to create branch/tag, move, change properties, view revisions etc. But there is no “Repository Browser” yet and the “Revert” option needs more polish. Also I noticed that as my working copy grew, NautilusSVN seems to slow down Nautilus. This can be a major downside which might prevent the adoption of this otherwise great tool. But NautilusSVN is still in beta and I hope these issues will be resolved shortly.

Readers choice: Most popular Subversion clients

James — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:54:15 +0000

Subversion is a very popular version control system. As a result, subversion has a wide array of client tools which makes life difficult for us, the users. So we wanted to know what our readers actually use and here is the summary of their opinions.

Not surprisingly, close to 50% of them use the popular TortoiseSVN as their client.

The only limiting factor of this wildly popular tool is that it is available only for Windows.

Surprisingly, the second most popular choice for users is their IDE (like Eclipse, NetBeans etc). 30% users are satisfied with the support provided by their IDE. I hope this user base will only increase in future as the IDEs offer more sophisticated support not just for Subversion but also for other popular version control systems.

But there are some limiting factor in using the IDE as the Subversion client. The support, in most cases (atleast in NetBeans), is limited to only the projects you are working from the IDE. That’s where the third popular Subversion client comes into picture.

The third choice of the users is the Subversion command line client which comes bundled with Subversion.

To be frank, the command line client is what all you need with the only limiting factor being it’s “command line” nature . Whenever the tool you use falls short in certain scenarios, the command line client can be your life saver. 14% of users vow by the Subversion command line client and I believe most of them are Linux users.

RapidSVN comes at the distant fourth garnering only 5% of votes.

Going by the comments, SmartSVN is preferred by a couple of users and so is nautilus scripts, nautilussvn, git-svn, kdesvn.

I have used SmartSVN for a while and I would say it’s almost on par with TortoiseSVN. The biggest advantage of SmartSVN is it’s cross platform nature while the biggest drawback is that it’s not opensource. NautilusSVN has big potential as it attempts to become the TortoiseSVN for linux.

Thanks for everyone who participated in the poll “What is your favourite Subversion client?”

If you use any other Subversion client, please let us know.

Read more about Subversion at the dedicated SolitaryGeek Subversion category.

Poll: What is your favourite Subversion client?

James — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 15:58:17 +0000

Do you use Subversion as your version control system? Then, please share with us what is your favourite Subversion client.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this . . . → Read More: Poll: What is your favourite Subversion client?

Subversion and RapidSVN

James — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:07:09 +0000

Subversion is a very popular version control system. Though Subversion provides a very robust command line client, most of us prefer using a nice GUI front end. Windows users are really fortunate to have a powerful tool like TortoiseSVN which without any argument is simply the best front end for Subversion. Unfortunately, TortoiseSVN is available for just the Windows platform. Here I would like to highlight about RapidSVN, a cross-platform GUI front end for Subversion.

This tutorial is directed towards new users of Linux or people who migrated from Windows to Linux recently. If you are a Windows user, TortoiseSVN might be the best bet for you. Learn more about TortoiseSVN from the post “Extending Subversion by using TortoiseSVN“.

Pre-requisites
Subversion

Installation
Installing RapidSVN in Ubuntu is a breeze,

sudo apt-get install rapidsvn

Once installation is done, RapidSVN can be found under “Applications -> Programming”. Or if you use a dock like GNOME-Do, you can launch it by typing “rapidsvn”.

For other platforms, download the latest release from the RapidSVN site.

[smartads]

Adding a repository to RapidSVN
Unlike TortoiseSVN which seamlessly integrates into Windows Explorer, RapidSVN allows you to manage the files from a dedicated user interface. RapidSVN will display details like status, author, revision number etc in separate columns.

To add a new repository to RapidSVN, right click “Bookmarks”, click “Add Existing Repository” and enter the repository url.

Checkout a working copy
To checkout a working copy from the repository, right click a repository, click “Checkout New Working Copy” and enter appropriate details.

RapidSVN will display any unversioned files in your working copy, if any.

Adding files to working copy
Right click any unversioned file and then click “Add” to add them in your working copy. Click “Add recursive” if you want to add a folder with multiple sub folders inside it.

RapidSVN will display appropriate status regarding the files that are added in your working copy but not yet committed to the repository.

Commiting changes
You can commit the added files, modified files by right clicking them and selecting “Commit”.

[smartads]
Updating working copy
Right click your working copy in the RapidSVN sidebar and click “Update” to update your working copy.

View history (Log)
To view the change history of a file, right click a file and select “Log”.

Reverting local changes
Right click a modified file and click “Revert” to revert the changes you made to your working copy.

Compare the changes made (Diff)
Unlike TortoiseSVN, RapidSVN does not provide built in support for “Diff”. However, you can instruct RapidSVN to use any externl diff tool to fill that gap. So this is what you will see when you attempt to run “Diff” on a file,

Fortunately, there are many excellent “Diff” tools available. I use “Meld” as the diff tool in Ubuntu Linux. “Meld” should be available in all major Linux distros. This is how you will install “Meld” in Ubuntu,

sudo apt-get install meld

Once you have your diff tool of choice installed, you need to tell RapidSVN to use the diff tool. In RapidSVN, click “View -> Preferences” and then open the “Programs” tab. In the “Programs” tab, look for a section called “Diff Tool” and enter the command name there and save the changes.

Now you can diff the changes made to a file by right clicking it and selecting “Diff” or “Diff to Head” or “Diff to Base”.

Once you click “OK”, RapidSVN will invoke the respective Diff tool to display the differences.

Other Settings
If you want to open and edit files right from within RapidSVN, open “Edit -> Preferences” and then enter the appropriate value in the “Standard Editor” section.

If you want to explore your working copy from within RapidSVN, then configure the “Standard Explorer” section in “Preferences”.

Overall, RapidSVN is a solid Subversion client especially to linux users. What Subversion client do you use?

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Extending Subversion with Apache

James — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 05:14:37 +0000

In one of my previous post, I explained about using TortoiseSVN with subversion. Continuing in the same vein, we will see how to extend subversion with the Apache web server. Apache, the most popular http server in the world provides powerful extension point to your subversion repositories and a strong understanding of how these two technologies work together is very important for those who are into it.

Objective:

- To learn how to configure Apache http server to provide remote access to subversion repositories.
- To learn how to configure authorization and access control to subversion repositories through Apache http server.

Pre-requisites:

- Subversion 1.4.6 for Apache 2.2
- TortoiseSVN

Step 1: Download Apache 2.2:

Download the latest Apache 2.2 installer from here.

Step 2: Install Apache 2.2:

Installing the Apache http server is very straightforward. Just follow the instructions in the installer gui.
Let’s call the Apache installation directory as APACHE_HOME. (Normally this shall be C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2 in windows)

Step 3: Copy Subversion modules/dll for Apache:

Subversion comes with two modules that Apache can use to access the repositories.

1. mod_dav_svn.so – The subversion module to provide filesystem access
2. mod_authz_svn.so – The subversion module to provide fine grained access control

These two modules can be found in the SUBVERSION_HOME\bin directory. Copy these files to APACHE_HOME\modules directory.

It’s not over yet. There are two more files you need to copy to ensure that the Apache-Subversion setup works correctly.

1. libdb44.dll
2. intl3_svn.dll

Where are they located? Well, in the same SUBVERSION_HOME\bin directory. Copy these files to APACHE_HOME\bin directory.

Congrats! You have successfully setup your Apache http server. We will now look how to configure Apache to access your subversion repositories.

Step 4 (Optional): Create a Subversion Repository

You want me to explain this again…?

Step 5: Configure http.conf to load Subversion modules for Apache

The http.conf file is the configuration file used by Apache. It can be found in APACHE_HOME\conf directory. We need to configure this file to instruct Apache to load the subversion modules we copied in Step 3. (Remember..?)

Look for the “Dynamic Shared Object (DSO) Support” section in your http.conf. You can see many “LoadModule” statements in this section. Now, uncomment the following line:

LoadModule dav_module modules/mod_dav.so

Add the following lines after adding the above mentioned line:

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

Step 6: Configure Subversion repositories in http.conf

Assume that you have a repository at the location “E:\Subversion\Repositories\test-repository”. You want to access this repository using the url “http://localhost/svn/test-repository”. Let us instruct Apache on how to handle this scenario.

Go to the end of your http.conf file and add the following lines:
(Please replace the SVNPath mentioned here with that of yours. Note that we are using file separator “/” and not “\”)

DAV svn
SVNPath E:/Subversion/Repositories/test-repository

After adding this, restart your Apache service for the changes to take effect.

This is a bare minimum configuration which should enable Apache to access to your subversion repository. Want to check this? Point your browser to the url “http://localhost/svn/test-repository” and Apache http server will be happily displaying all the files under your repository.

Step 7: Authentication

Now your subversion repository can be remotely accessed through Apache http server. And anyone in your network can do a subversion checkout by typing the following command in command prompt.

svn co http://localhost/svn/test-repository YOUR_DIRECTORY

(Or if you have tortoisesvn, you can right click inside any directory and do a “SVN Checkout”)

And people can even change the source code and “commit” the changes back to your repository. But you don’t want that to happen. You want only authenticated users to access your repository. With Apache, this can be a piece of cake for you. Apache comes with a inbuilt “htpasswd” command line utility to help you create users and passwords in a secured way. To put that into action, just follow these steps:

- Open command prompt and navigate to APACHE_HOME\bin directory.
- Type the command,

htpasswd -c “APACHE_HOME\conf\users.htpasswd” james

Here you are instructing the “htpasswd” utility to create a new user named “james” in a password file called “users.htpasswd” in the directory “APACHE_HOME\conf”. When you enter this command, you will be prompted to enter a password for this user and to confirm it as well. Apache will use MD5 encryption standard (by default) to encrypt the password and store that in the “users.htpasswd” file mentioned by you.

The following screenshot explains this process.

To add more users you can use the following command:

htpasswd “APACHE_HOME\conf\users.htpasswd” gift

This tells the htpasswd utility to add a user named “gift” in the same “users.htpasswd” file.

You have to instruct Apache to refer to this file for authentication. Open your http.conf file and modify the block you created in Step 6. Your block should now look like this:

DAV svn
SVNPath E:/Subversion/Repositories/test-repository
AuthType Basic
AuthName “Subversion test-repository”
AuthUserFile conf/users.htpasswd
Require valid-user

In the above block you are instructing Apache to use “Basic” authentication type and allow only “valid users” mentioned in the file “conf/users.htpasswd”.
(NOTE: You are mentioning the relative path of the “users.htpasswd” file from your document root. Your default document root is APACHE_HOME.)

Want to see your settings in action? Save your http.conf file, restart your Apache service and point your browser to the url “http://localhost/svn/test-repository”. You will not be able to access your repository as you did before, you must be authenticated to proceed further. You might see some popup window like this:

If you entered your credentials correctly, you can access the subversion repository through your browser. If your credentials were wrong, your browser will display a page like this:

Step 8: Access Control

Great! You have configured your Apache http server in such a way that only “authorized users” (specified by you in the file “users.htpasswd”) can access your subversion repository. Here comes another need which requires you to specify “specific users” to access “specific parts” of your repository. For example, you want to give your users “read-write” access to the “trunk” folder but only “read” access to “tags” folder. How to achieve this..?

First, create a file called test-repository-authz.conf in the directory APACHE_HOME\conf. We will now define the access controls for your users. It can look something like this:

[/]
james=r
gift=r[/trunk]
james=rw
gift=rw

This says that give “read” access to the users “james” and “gift” for all parts of the repository except for the “trunk” folder where they both will have “read-write” access.

But how will Apache refer to this file…? We need to modify our “Location” block again this time, something like this:

DAV svn
SVNPath E:/Subversion/Repositories/test-repository
AuthType Basic
AuthName “Subversion test-repository”
AuthUserFile conf/users.htpasswd
AuthzSVNAccessFile conf/test-repository-authz.conf
Require valid-user

That’s it! Now you have fine grained control over who access which portion of your repository.

Step 9 (Optional): Even more Access Control

Having successfully setup the Apache http server to access your subversion repositories, you are planning to enjoy your coffee break with your colleagues. Suddenly your boss calls you and says “Hei, I want even tight access control mechanism based on IP Address. I don’t want anyone to access our subversion repositories from any other machines other than the one we give access. I hope you can do it.” You think “Can Apache handle this scenario..?”. Why not..? This is how you do that with few more additional lines…

DAV svn
SVNPath E:/Subversion/Repositories/test-repositoryOrder deny,allow

#Deny access to all machines except for the ones listed in the “Allow” section
Deny from all

#Allow access to the following machines.
Allow from x.x.x.x
Allow from y.y.y.y

AuthType Basic
AuthName “Subversion test-repository”
AuthUserFile conf/users.htpasswd
AuthzSVNAccessFile conf/test-repository-authz.conf
Require valid-user

(Note: Please mention the actual IP address instead of “x.x.x.x” and “y.y.y.y”)

We will explore what these statements mean here.

Order deny,allow

The above statement instructs Apache to process “Deny” statements before “Allow” statements.

Deny from all

The above statement instructs Apache to deny access to all machines by default.

Allow from x.x.x.x
Allow from y.y.y.y

The above statement instructs Apache to allow access from the machines with the IP Address “x.x.x.x” and “y.y.y.y”.

Apache is such a versatile server that it provides many other options but that is outside the scope of this blog entry. Hopefully I will try to cover some of them in another post. Thank you very much for reading this post patiently. I hope this is useful to some of you.

Subversion and NetBeans – A quick start guide

James — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 02:24:10 +0000

Introduction:

Subversion is arguably the most popular version control system as of now. No wonder NetBeans has very good support for Subversion. I personally feel that a java developer must be familiar with both these tools. This article shall help you to get started with both these tools.

Objectives:

- To create a simple java project in NetBeans.

- To import the java project into the subversion repository.

- To commit the changes made in a java source file.

- To view the revision history of a java source file which was changed.

- To rollback to the previous revision of the java source file.

Requirements:

- NetBeans 6.1 Beta or NetBeans 6.0

- Subversion

- TortoiseSVN

- Though not mandatory, but a basic knowledge of subversion concepts.

Note: You can read this article to learn how to install/configure Subversion and TortoiseSVN.

Step 1:

Create a new “Java Application” project called “SimpleLogin”.

Step 2:

Create a new JFrame called “LoginFrame” under the package “org.example.simplelogin” and add the necessary components as shown below.

Step 3:

Name the swing components accordingly.

Your application should like this now on preview:

Step 4:

Create a java class named “LoginService” under the package “org.example.simplelogin”.

Step 5:

Add the following code to the LoginService class.

Here we are defining a simple method which shall return true if the username is “guest” and the password is “password”.

[smartads]

Step 6:

Now open “LoginFrame.java” and add the following methods.

The above methods are self explanatory. We are just doing a simple validation and calling the login method we defined previously in the class LoginService.

Step 7:

Now double click the login “button” in the design mode of LoginFrame.java to create the event handling method named “loginButtonActionPerformed”. Add the following code to call the “performLogin” method.

That’s it.

Step 8:

Run the project.

If you enter the username as “guest” and password as “password”, you will get an output like this.

Otherwise, you will be getting an output like this.

Ok, our simple login application is ready for prime time . Now let us import this project into a subversion repository.

Step 9:

Create an empty folder called “MyRepository” in a preferred location.

Step 10:

Create a subversion repository in the empty “MyRepository” folder as mentioned below, by right clicking anywhere inside the windows explorer.

Accept the default option (FSFS) in the “Create Repository” window.

That’s it. Your repository should be ready when you press “OK” and it should look something like this.

Step 11:

Let us import the NetBeans project we have created into the subversion repository. Right click the NetBeans project we have created and then click “Versioning -> Import into Subversion Repository”.

NetBeans will prompt you with a window. Enter the path of your repository as shown below.

Click the “Next” button and enter the “Repository Folder” name into which you would like to import your project. To make things simple, let us enter our NetBeans project name itself as the “Repository Folder” name. Also enter a small description about this import activity as shown below.

We are almost there. Click the “Next” button and the IDE will show a window like this.

Accept the default entries and click “Finish”. Congratulations! you have imported your project successfully into the subversion repository.

Right click anywhere in your desktop/windows explorer and click “TortoiseSVN -> Repo-Browser” and then enter the path of your subversion repository. You can see all your project files sitting comfortably inside the subversion repository.

Step 12:

Let us play around with some more cool subversion integration features offered by NetBeans. Open the class “LoginService.java” and change the value of “DUMMY_PASSWORD” from “password” to “guest”.

You can see the IDE markup a blue shade near the line you made the change. This indicates that your source file has got something different than the version in the repository. You can also note that the IDE change your java source file name’s font-color to blue.

Let us turn our focus to the editor window again. Click the blue stripe shown by the IDE near the place where you made changes to the source file. The IDE will popup a small hint-window.

You can see the previous value of the DUMMY_PASSWORD there. The IDE also provides you a set of buttons to revert back the changes or to have a “diff” view on the changes made. Let us explore the “diff’ functionality of the IDE first by clicking the “diff” button.

The IDE will display the “diff” view of the “working copy” and the “HEAD” revision (the latest committed version) in the repository.

From the above figure, you can see the current and previous value of the string DUMMY_PASSWORD. Now you can revert back to the old value of “DUMMY_PASSWORD” by clicking the replace button (displayed like an arrow)

When you press the “replace” button, the IDE will replace the “current” value with the “original” value.

The “diff” view provided by the IDE will be very useful to examine and compare the changes made to the “working copy” alongwith the option to revert back to the original version in the repository. But if all you need is to quickly revert back some change to the original version in the repository, you can click on the blue strip in the source code and click the “revert” button.

That’s cool, right?

Step 13:

Enough playing. Now let us commit the changes we made in our source file. Ensure that the source file you are willing to commit is in focus and click the menu “Versioning -> Commit”

When you click the “Commit” menu item, the IDE will prompt you with a window to enter the “message” for this commit operation. Enter a commit message and click the “Commit” button.

Step 14:

Let us explore the history of our source file and see the the changes we made all along. Click the “Versioning -> Search History” menu.

The IDE will display all the versions of the source file.

In the “Search History” window, the IDE offers two views, “summary” view and “diff” view. By default, the IDE displays the “summary” view. The “diff” view contains more information.

You can straightaway “revert” or “rollback” to previous revisions just by right clicking a particular revision.

Nice, isn’t it? There are still a lot more cool subversion features offered by NetBeans. I will blog more about that later. I hope the information provided here was useful to you.

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Extending Subversion by using TortoiseSVN

James — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 09:56:22 +0000

Though Subversion is a powerful version control system, it’s command-line based interface may not appeal to some users who used other version control systems like Visual Source Safe. And what if you want to remotely access your repository as well?

TortoiseSVN and Apache comes to your aid. TortoiseSVN is a powerful tool for Subversion, which helps you to issue most of the subversion commands from your windows explorer. Subversion has an inbuilt “svnserve” utility which helps you to expose your repository to remote users, but it’s highly recommended to use the flexible Apache Web Server for this purpose. Subversion comes with it’s own apache modules to expose your repository to remote users. However, in this article we will not focus on Apache. I’m planning to write about the apache integration in my next post. Please be patient

Objective:

In this article you will learn how to install Subversion and TortoiseSVN and use them to create a repository, import files into the repository and view the repository.

Step 1: Install Subversion

Download subversion windows installer for Apache 2.2.x. (Download the file called “svn-x.y.z-setup.exe” and run the installer. Installing should be a straight forward option.

You might see the following windows. They are self explanatory.

Now you should have subversion successfully installed in your machine. To verify that, open the command prompt and type “svn –version”. If you see something like below, pat your head, you have successfully installed subversion.

If you couldn’t see the above mentioned message, you might want to check your “Path” environment variable and add your subversion installation directory to the “Path”.

Step 2: Install TortoisSVN

Download TortoiseSVN from here.

That’s it. Now the installer setup might prompt you to restart your system to complete the installation process. Accept it.

Step 3: Create a Subversion Repository

Now, it’s time to create a subversion repository. Though it’s possible to use the subversion’s “svnadmin” command to create the repository, we will use TortoiseSVN to achieve that.

3a) First, choose a appropriate location to keep all your repositories. In my case it’s “F:\Subversion”. Let us call this folder as REPOSITORY_ROOT. Now, let us create an empty directory called “MyRepository” inside REPOSITORY_ROOT. It should look something like this:

3b) Now, right click inside the folder REPOSITORY_ROOT\MyRepository, and click “TortoiseSVN -> Create repository here” menu.

3c) TortoisSVN will now prompt you with a message box like this:

Leave the default option (Native file system), and click “OK”. You can see a bunch of files inside the “MyRepository” folder like this:

Great!! This is your subversion repository.

Step 4: Import files into your subversion repository

4a) Let us add some files inside our newly created subversion repository. Right click a folder of your choice and click “TortoiseSVN -> Import”

4b) Enter the appropriate repository path where you would like to import these files into. In my case it’s “file:///f:/subversion/myrepository/photos”.

4C) When you press “OK”, TortoiseSVN will import all the files/folders inside the folder which you selected for the import operation into the subversion repository.

4D) Press “OK”. Now we have finished importing the files into our new subversion repostiory. It’s now time to view the content of our repository.

Step 5: Viewing the content of your subversion repository

5a) TortoiseSVN provides a nice “Repository Browser” option to view the content of your subversion repository. Right anywhere in your explorer window/desktop and click “TortoiseSVN -> Repo-browser”.

5B) Enter the url of your subversion repository. In my case, it’s “file:///f:/subversion/myrepository” and click “OK”.

5C) That’s it, now TortoiseSVN will list down all the files inside your repository.

Summary:

In this article, you learned to:

- install Subversion

- install TortoiseSVN

- create a new repository using TortoiseSVN

- import files into the subversion repository using TortoiseSVN

- view the content of the subversion repository using TortoiseSVN

What next?

I initially thought of even writing about installing, configuring apache/websvn in this article itself. But it already took me nearly 3 hours to finish writing this. So please bear with me. I’ll come with a Part II of this article where you will learn how to use apache/websvn along with subversion to make the interaction with your version control system a pleasure. See you again.

Added on August 2, 2008:

I have written an article named “Extending Subversion with Apache“. This article is about setting up Apache http server and configuring it to access subversion repositories. It also deals how to setup Authentication and Access control for your subversion repositories using Apache. Hope you find it useful.

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