Centos – SVN Commit Not Updating Files On Server

centossvnversion controlweb-server

I have followed this guide http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Subversion and everything has worked as far as 5.3 (i can check out files).

I had an existing directory "/var/www/file-manager". This directory is mapped to a virtual host (ie this is a live website that i can access through a URL). I added this directory to SVN (using servers command line).

svn import /var/www/file-manager file:///var/www/svn/repos/mytestproj -m "Initial repository layout for mytestproj"

I successfully checked out the whole directory using tortoise SVN (I used "http://svn.example.com/repos" to get the files). I modified one of the php files and committed it back using the commit option. This updated the revision number and appeared to have worked. I went to /var/www/file-manager and opened the file i just modified, but the change was not there. According to tortoise the file is up to date with the server, yet the file on the server is not. Any idea whats happening here?

I eventually want to use this for the full website (which is considerably larger), so i want to figure out what is wrong before i do this. This directory existed before i installed SVN

Best Answer

An svn import does not turn the folder you imported into a working copy. You'll need to do another checkout on /var/www/file-manager and then do an svn update on it for it to see the changes from your other commits.

Subversion does not automatically update other working copies. You need to do a manual update on those working copies to see the changes you've made.

This is very much by design. You don't want your production system getting updated every time you accidentally commit some code with a critical bug.

Additionally, if you're going to be hosting your website from an SVN working copy, you'll want to add .htaccess rules barring visitors from poking around in the .svn folders. Or, even better, don't run your website from a working copy. Have an update script that has a working copy somewhere else, do an svn update on that, and then an svn export from the working copy to your live website.

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This is because SVN uses a local 'cache' of the working copy files to decide what is different from the repository (so it doesn't have to contact the repo, to fetch the file, to diff it, just to find out that you've changed it).

In this case, that isn't working as you want as the working copy (and its cache) is out of sync with the repo. When you change those file and commit them, then you'll find that SVN will re-sync itself (and throw a 'whats going on' error no doubt).

So, you need to re-sync the working copy cache manually. First, take a copy of the working copy directory without the cache - ie the .svn directories. (search for .svn using the old Windows Search doggie and delete all those directories)

Then update the directory to fetch the current status of the repo, I think SVN will update the cache and will merge your local changes to the files in the repo, so you will be back to normal - ie the changed files will get the 'modified' icon, and then you can commit the changes. I'm pretty sure this is what will happen, but I'm always paranoid about losing data after a restore which is why you will first make the copy. If anything goes wrong, you can just overwrite the files fetched from the repo with your old WC, and it'll show as modified. commit as normal.

Svn post-commit not performing

From your hook script, call another script to do the svn updating. Limit www-data's sudo abilitys just JUST running that script. Don't accept any args.

From the script that will do the updating, make sure you su so the user that owns the local working copy you are updatin, like this:

in sudoers:

www-data ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:/usr/local/bin/update_my_thing

Hook script that get's called by svn and is running as www-data:

#/bin/sh
sudo /usr/local/bin/update_my_thing

Then in /usr/local/bin/update_my_thing

#/bin/sh
USER=usernam_that_owns_localsvncopy
su $USER -c 'svn up /path/to/localsvncopy'

Best Answer

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