Version Control with Subversion, 2nd Edition

Chapter 6. Server Configuration

A Subversion repository can be accessed simultaneously by clients running on the same machine on which the repository resides using the file:// method. But the typical Subversion setup involves a single server machine being accessed from clients on computers all over the office—or, perhaps, all over the world.

This chapter describes how to get your Subversion repository exposed outside its host machine for use by remote clients. We will cover Subversion’s currently available server mechanisms, discussing the configuration and use of each. After reading this chapter, you should be able to decide which networking setup is right for your needs as well as understand how to enable such a setup on your host computer.

Overview

Subversion was designed with an abstract network layer. This means that a repository can be programmatically accessed by any sort of server process, and the client “repository access” API allows programmers to write plug-ins that speak relevant network protocols. In theory, Subversion can use an infinite number of network implementations. In practice, there are only two servers at the time of this writing.

Apache is an extremely popular web server; using the mod_dav_svn module, Apache can access a repository and make it available to clients via the WebDAV/DeltaV protocol, which is an extension of HTTP. Because Apache is an extremely extensible server, it provides a number of features “for free,” such as encrypted SSL communication, logging, ...