Hints for Using SVN to collaborate on school projects

Under construction

SVN Basics

Directory Structure

|-- Team_Repository_Account
  +--branches
  | +-- member-id1  <-- this is the student's home in branches
  |   +-- Task1
  |   +-- Task2
  | +-- member-id2
  |   +-- Task1
  |   +-- Task2
  |   +-- Task3
  | +-- member-id3
  |   +-- Task1
  +--tags
  | +-- R0.1
  | +-- R0.11
  | +-- R0.2
  | +-- R0.21
  | +-- ...
  | +-- R0.5
  | +-- ...
  | +-- R1.0
  | +-- R1.1
  | +-- R1.2
  | +-- R1.21
  +--trunk

Branches

• Branches is a common place for all team members' workspaces.
• Each team member should create a home directory or workspace (member-id1, member-id2,...) for his own development tasks in branches.
• The team-member's workspace is then divided in several directories (workspaces) during the development of the project. These workspaces(Task1, Task2, ...) are usually copies of the trunk to be worked on.

  These directories(Task1, Task2,...) are called branches of trunk. Also Note that when the word branch is used as a verb, it means copying the whole trunk into a subdirectory, either in Branches or tags.

Tags

• tags directory holds copies of successful stages of trunk during development. (Also called as Milestones)
• tags are never modified or edited. You may branch the a directory of tag into branches under a workspace and then modify it and apply the changes back to trunk, but the contents of a tag should never change
• The action of branching the trunk into tags is often referred to as a release.
• Most importantly, we use the tags directory to submit the work to the professor to be marked. Your professor will specify what are the requirements of a release.
  • A release is usual tagged by a version like: R0.1, Prj0.2, As1_1.0
  • When a release is due, always the latest version of that realease will be marked.

    If R0.3 is due, and in tags R0.3, R0.31, R0.32 are present, then R0.32 will be marked

Trunk

• trunk IS the project at current staged, complied and run-able
• trunk should never be at a non-complied stage. (usually trunk should be the exact copy as (or better than) the last version in tags).
• If only one project is done within this repository, then trunk has no project level subdirectory and is the root of the project, otherwise, trunk is divided into several directories for each project to be version-controlled.

  In this case Tags should also be divided to the exact same project directories as trunk

Starting the Project On SVN

There are two possibilities to initiate a project:

1. Start the project from zero

   This is when you create a project and start the code yourself

2. Start the project by continuing an existing work

   This is when you have the project started by someone else (i.e. Professor, other team-members, etc.) and you want to copy the work into your own repository and continue the work.