I have set up VisualSvn Server, created a repository and added Visual Studio solution to it by using AnkhSVN. The url for repository is something like https://msi-pc/svn/MyProj/. Due to my incompetence a question : is this URL mapped to location on HD where I can see actual solution files ? In C:\Repositories I don't find them. Perhaps my understanding of SVN is wrong, I thought that repository contains the most recent version of my solution that I checked in (like in TFS). Thank you,
3 Answers
The repository is implemented as a database. Below every repository root folder you will find folders like conf
, hooks
and db
. They are handled by the SVN binaries, the contained information is provided by the SVN protocol and may be presented as WebDAV or HTML by an appropriately configured Apache (which is what VisualSVN contains).
So your project structure is not visible as folder structure and file structure within the repositories
folder. You can only access the contents via the SVN protocol.
To access a SVN repository, you need an installed SVN client (like AnkhSVN in VisualStudio or TortoiseSVN under Windows) or for read-only access, you can use your browser. So if you want to see the repository structure with the latest content, just insert the URL of your solution in SVN into the browser. If https://msi-pc/svn/MyProj/
is the repository URL, this URL will work in every browser as well. Your installed VisualSVN server will provide a UI to access the contents, but also the meta data and configuration of your Subversion repository.
Subversion does not simply store the latest and greatest version of a file, but instead records all the changes made over time. When you checkout code from your repository, you're getting a summation of all of the changes made.
The changes are stored in a special format and should not be accessed directly, but through a Subversion client. Since you're using VisualSVN server, you can also see the latest version of the files via a web browser.