Other Useful Commands

While not as frequently used as the commands previously discussed in this chapter, you will occasionally need these commands.

svn cleanup

When Subversion modifies your working copy (or any information within .svn), it tries to do so as safely as possible. Before changing anything, it writes its intentions to a log file, executes the commands in the log file, then removes the log file (this is similar in design to a journaled filesystem). If a Subversion operation is interrupted (if you hit Control-C, or if the machine crashes, for example), the log files remain on disk. By re-executing the log files, Subversion can complete the previously started operation, and your working copy can get itself back into a consistent state.

And this is exactly what svn cleanup does: it searches your working copy and runs any leftover logs, removing locks in the process. If Subversion ever tells you that some part of your working copy is “locked”, then this is the command that you should run. Also, svn status will display an L next to locked items:

$ svn status
  L    ./somedir
M      ./somedir/foo.c 

$ svn cleanup
$ svn status
M      ./somedir/foo.c
      

svn import

The svn import command is a quick way to copy an unversioned tree of files into a repository.

$ svnadmin create /usr/local/svn/newrepos
$ svn import mytree file:///usr/local/svn/newrepos/fooproject
Adding  mytree/foo.c
Adding  mytree/bar.c
Adding  mytree/subdir
Adding  mytree/subdir/quux.h
Transmitting file data....
Committed revision 1.
      

The above example copied the contents of directory mytree under the directory fooproject in the repository:

/fooproject/foo.c
/fooproject/bar.c
/fooproject/subdir
/fooproject/subdir/quux.h