How to get started with svn:externals?

Question

I'm looking for a succinct and well-written tutorial on using svn:externals.

I already know how to use them in a basic way myself, but I want a good article that I can link to when answering questions like this one that come up recently:

What to do with multiple projects depending on the same source?

I'd do it myself, but I don't use them often enough to want to stick my neck out and write a tutorial on it. Google was surprisingly unhelpful with this topic.

Madalena

Answer 1

Here are some sections about it in the svnbook / TortoiseSVN manual:

This is the svnbook page on svn:externals. It is the most useful resource on the subject.

This one explains four ways to include sub-projects in the workflow (and in the process misses a fifth one: symlinks).

And this last one is a TortoiseSVN-specific page on how to import stuff in a repository (not directly related to svn:externals).

Rauwolfia

Answer 2

In case it isn't clear from the links provided above, the way you set the svn:externals property that is tied to a particular revision (pinning), here it is:

svn propset svn:externals "plugins -r12345 https://svn.example.com/common/plugins" extras

That will will make a plugins subdirectory under the extras directory and link it to revision 12345 of the external SVN URL https://svn.example.com/common/plugins.

There is a Red Bean article that suggests using propedit since the svn:externals can be a multi-line value. The above example would be changed as follows to use propedit.

svn propedit svn:externals extras

You would then add one line for each external link following the same format shown above for the value.

Wiebmer

The positioning of the quotes is the key to getting propset to work. Without the quotes, all sorts of errors are generated. – Enormous

Answer 3

root/repo1/proj/base/common/log.c
root/repo1/proj/base/common/log.h
root/repo1/proj/base/client

root/repo2/proj/test/base

As show above, we want to copy 2 files and 1 directory to repo2

Step1

directory: /home/jack/repo2/proj/

cd /home/jack

Step2

svn propset svn:externals "../repo1/proj/base/client proj/base/client" repo2

something like: ln repo1/proj/base/client repo2/proj/base/client

Step3

export SVN_EDITOR=vim

Step4

svn propedit svn:externals repo2

vim shows :

../repo1/proj/base/client proj/base/client

Step5: add another two files

../repo1/proj/base/client proj/base/client
../repo1/proj/base/common/log.c proj/base/common/log.c
../repo1/proj/base/common/log.h proj/base/common/log.h

Kevinkevina