Can I move an existing Subversion repository into a new parent repository (and retain the history)?

Question

Currently I have a root-level repository set up for each project, like so:

Project1
Project2
Project3
Project5
Project5

I'd like to reorganise this so that rather than a repository for each individual project, I just have one for each logical grouping, and then the projects would just be folders within those 'group repositories', e.g:

WebSites
    Project1
    Project2
DesktopApps
    Project3
Libraries
    Project4
    Project5

Is this at all possible while retaining the history of the existing repositories? I've looked around quite a bit but all I can find is stuff on moving folders about within the same repository, and moving folders out of a repository into a new repository.

It's only for personal stuff anyway, so it's not the end of the world if it's just a straight 'no' - but it would be nice to know so I'm not just banging my head against a wall :)

Answer 1

You should be able to dump it, then reload it to a subdirectory of a new repository:

svnadmin dump http://oldrepo/ > mydump

svnadmin load --parent-dir my/new/folder http://newrepo/ < mydump

Answer 2

svnbook: Migrating Repository Data Elsewhere

Answer 3

You can use tailor to import the revisions into the new repository. It checks out the code from the old repository one revision after another and commits it to the new repository.

This can also be used to convert the history of one type of version control system to another.

An tailor project file would look like this:

[DEFAULT]
root-directory = /var/tmp/tailor
verbose = true

[myproject]
source = svn:oldrepo
target = svn:newrepo
start-revision = INITIAL

[svn:oldrepo]
repository = svn://oldhost.example.com/svnroot
module = trunk
subdir = repo-in

[svn:newrepo]
repository = svn://newhost.example.com/some/path
module = trunk
subdir = repo-out

If this file is called settings.cfg, this will copy /trunk of the old repository revison by revison to the new location:

tailor --configfile=settings.cfg myproject

The target repository needs to already exist and probably should have an empty trunk subdirectory.

Answer 4

Since the accepted answer is incomplete and hasn't been corrected, here's how you actually do it.

(1) Your source repo is a single-project repo, with top-level dir foo. Go to your old server and create a dump file:

[old-server]$ svnadmin dump /path/to/old-repo > foo.dump

(2) Your target repo already contains two projects, with top-level dirs bar and baz, and is at http://new-server/svn. Now create an additonal foo top level:

[client]$ svn ls http://new-server/svn/
bar/
baz/
[client]$ svn mkdir -m "Adding new foo project" http://new-server/svn/foo
[client]$ svn ls http://new-server/svn/
bar/
baz/
foo/

(3) On your new server, the repo is at /path/to/new-repo (which is what http://new-server/svn/ maps to). Note that the svn mkdir above didn't actually create a new directory in /path/to/new-repo; it just changed the database. Go to the new server and

[new-server]$ svnadmin load /path/to/new-repo --parent-dir foo < foo.dump

Done, with complete history. You can now check out foo as:

[client]$ svn co http://new-server/svn/foo foo

If this is the first time you've done an svnadmin, you may find that you get file permission errors (txn-current-lock/etc) if, for example, the repo is owned by apache, and you're not in the apache group. The easiest fix is to add yourself to the apache group.