Open Source

Quick 'n Dirty way to move Subversion to another machine

John Watson — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:14:41 GMT

If you have an existing Subversion tree on disk somewhere and you wish to move it to another machine, here's a quick 'n dirty way to do it. I'm pretty sure I read this before somewhere but couldn't find it however I decided to try it anyway. Basically, you install the same version of Subversion onto the new server, create an identically named repository ("svnadmin create foo" - assuming "foo" is the name of the new repo), replace the contents of the "foo" directory from the original machine and voila.

Of course, this is no doubt unsupported - the proper way to move a repository to another location is documented here.

Forget CentOS under Virtual PC - Ubuntu is "IN"

John Watson — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 20:07:08 GMT

Late last year I blogged about trying to use CentOS under Virtual PC. After several attempts, I basically gave up. There's something to be said for marketing and "mind share" - which Ubuntu has plenty of. Earlier this year I took a stab at using Ubuntu with Virtual PC (and Virtual Server) and got a lot further. In fact, I managed to get a full working version for a developer environment. I also got a version going for an Oracle server, a WebSphere/DB2 server and even a streaming media server.

Things went so well that I repurposed an old dual-processor Dell workstation to run as an Ubuntu development machine on "bare metal". I normally work in Windows but now can "dabble" in Linux without difficulty...

Because I'm working on enterprise-class applications using J2EE, I opted for using Ubuntu 6.06 (a.k.a. Dapper Drake) since it is the official server version with L.T.S. (long term support).

I can install and use the following on either environment:

Java 1.4 and 1.5
Eclipse IDE
JBoss application server
DB-Visualizer
Ant/Tomcat
Perforce
Firefox

The cool thing to me as a geek is that I can be on two totally different architectures and platforms and use the same tool sets to work on the same code.

Installing CentOS 4.4 under Virtual PC 2004

John Watson — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 12:08:00 GMT

CentOS is a free version of RedHat Enterprise Linux which closely mirrors the commercial version. There are many places in the 'verse which detail changing the default color depth from 24-bit to 16-bit for the S3 Trio adapter that VPC emulates. After doing this I tried 'startx' only to find it wouldn't work so I started digging.

The X windowing environment started up then flashed and shutdown again with a console error of unable to find .xterm'. Checking around, I found examples from one cranky coot (a.k.a. Jason) under the heading 'Get GUI'. Turns out CentOS uses a package manager called 'yum' and he lists the commands for installing X11. I got as far as the the fonts before getting errors so I figured I fire it up again and see what happened. I did get a desktop but the size was way too big and unusable.

Jason also showed commands for installing XFCE which is a lighter and faster X-windowing system. So I tried that, typed in 'startxfce4' and voila! I then tried browsing the web only to get an error about Firefox not being installed. No problem - I opened a console window and tried 'yum install firefox' and it worked.

Hope this helps an old Windows developer like me ;)

Subversion and TortoiseSVN Installation Cookbook

John Watson — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 23:57:00 GMT

After reading several good things regarding Subversion and TortoiseSVN I decided to give it a try. The “final straw” came while looking into Ajax.NET which is housed in SVN and required installing TortoiseSVN to obtain the source. The process was so smooth and easy I decided it was worth a shot. The scm options facing my little company are very typical:

Continue using VSS with it's warts - extremely slow client, requires either VPN access to servers in office or a 3rd party product such as SourceOffsite to make remote access feasible, etc.
Purchase another solution such as Vault.
Migrate to Team Foundation Server - not only is the new pricing model a “step-up“ for small ISVs but there's hidden costs as well. It requires 3-tier deployment, must install/use Active Directory, requires SQL Server 2005. Can I really afford to update memory, buy licenses, and dedicate at least three servers for what used to take just one?
Try something else such as Subversion.

I decided to try door #4. Below is a quick “cookbook” style approach of what it took to get it up and running. Following that are a variety of links that I found.

Install Apache 2 (2.0.54):
1. Change httpd.conf to use non-default port (Listen 81 or Listen 8080).
2. Create Windows user account ApacheUser.
3. Grant ApacheUser modify rights to C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\logs
4. Change Apache service to run as ApacheUser and restart.
Install Subversion (1.2.1):
1. Run Subversion installer.
2. Modify httpd.conf to add /svn virtual root (see TortoiseSVN docs - 3.1.4)
3. Create svn root directory somewhere (e.g. F:\svn). Note the multiple warnings that you should NOT use the Berkley DB repository format for network shares (including UNC names, mapped drives, etc.).
4. Grant ApacheUser full control rights to svn root directory (e.g. F:\svn).
5. Create Apache passwd file and add users (can optionally configure for SSPI to Windows domain - see TortoiseSVN docs).
  1. bin\htpasswd -c passwd
  2. bin\htpasswd passwd
6. Restart Apache and test (http://localhost:81/svn/repos)
Install TortoiseSVN (1.2.2.4299 VS.NET - ASP.NET version) which is an excellent Windows shell extension for using SVN.
1. Re-boot to get shell extension icons working.
2. Right-click on repository (e.g. F:\svn\repos) and Create Repository...
Install AnkhSVN (0.5.5.1653) for VS.NET integration.
Edit \Application Data\AnkhSVN\ankhsvn.xml - uncomment
<AdminDirectoryName>_svn</AdminDirectoryName>
to match TortoiseSVN patch for ASP.NET files.
Final note for properly backing up the repository:
svnadmin hotcopy path/to/repository path/to/backup --clean-logs

Here's a list of links I found very helpful in addition to both the Subversion documentation and especially the TortoiseSVN documents (since it is a Windows client).

Cory Foy, Getting Subversion running with .NET
Michael Flanakin, Subversion and Windows Authentication with Subversion on Windows
Jonathan Malek, NAnt, Subversion and VS.NET
Fritz Onion, ASP.NET Application without Web Projects ** It seems a lot of folks like this one however I did not take this route - instead I used the “patched” version of TortoiseSVN which uses “_svn” instead of “.svn” for local admin directories.

One interesting piece of information I found was buried in the replies of this post. Specifically, “The important thing to note is: The initial copy you used to import is not a checked out copy. It cannot be used to work with subversion. You need to check out your own copy. (Even though you already have all the files)”.