Svn – How to use a batch file to dump only the last few weeks’ revisions in SVN

batchdumpsvn

We were previously backing up our full SVN dump each night, but the repository has now become too large.

If I was willing to cut off the revision history at say 2 weeks, how would I go about making a batch script to perform this dump?

I realise svnadmin dump can take a revision range, but I'm not sure how to write a script to get the revision number corresponding to a time in the past, e.g. 14 days ago.

Best Answer

The help text doesn't show it, but you can specify a revision range using dates or a few keywords, the same as you can with the normal svn commands. To dump commits from the previous month up to the current HEAD:

svnadmin dump /path/to/repo/ -r {2011-05-20}:HEAD > /path/to/dumpfile

Bear in mind that this method means you need to ensure that your snapshots catch every revision and don't overlap, since the dump files don't contain explicit revision numbering information. The restoration method of svnadmin load will just replay and renumber your revisions if there's any missing or any overlap.

I should mention svnadmin hotcopy as a backup option, since they're much faster than dumps. (You can take regular, offline dumps from the hotcopy if text dumps are what you need).

Related Solutions

Svn – How to delete previous revisions with svn

The answer is indeed to

svnadmin dump -r<revisionnumber> /old/repo/path > repo.dmp
svnadmin create /new/repo/path
svnadmin load  /new/repo/path <  repo.dmp

Do not use svn export, you might loss some handy svn:externals, svn:ignore's, svn:executable and the like. Older revisions & logging OK, but those you normally want to keep :)

Possible auth/access/hook/other configuration you can usually copy by copying the ./conf & ./hooks directories from the old repository to the new one. As long as there are no hardcoded paths in it those should work instantly. After copying those dirs do compare the file premissions of your old & new repo.

Use the svnadmin bin on the svn-server, you cannot do this with an svn client.

Svn – Should a call to SVNSYNC be blocking or not in a post-commit hook

I would consider moving this from a post-commit hook to an incrond task, which would use inotify to monitor the repository for changes and then run the svnsync task.

As a more modular setup, it would provide me with more flexibility with a unified configuration - i.e. I wouldn't have to keep updating various users' post-commit hooks.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Svn – How to delete previous revisions with svn

Svn – Should a call to SVNSYNC be blocking or not in a post-commit hook

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