Comments on: How to Move a Subversion Repository

By: Amy Thomas

Amy Thomas — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 21:01:31 +0000

How can I move source repository code that is in under one path to a different path.
Right now I have code under say,/data/MyStuff/Projects/proj1 I would like to move proj1 to
/data/Other/NewProjects/proj1.
Is this a complex task?
Thanks

By: Chandrala

Chandrala — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 06:00:24 +0000

Hi..

I tried the steps mentioned above.But didnt work.Tried Al’s Fix as well..didnt work either…:( What am I doing wrong?)Plz help..

By: Brandon

Brandon — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 07:34:30 +0000

It is sometimes convenient to do transfers through ssh, like tar or svn dumps — as long as you aren’t going to have a problem with the transfer being interrupted.

The following command will make the destination local repository, then
ssh to the remote repository source, and
dump the repository through gzip, whilst piping (stdout) it through the ssh connection…
…back to localhost where the stream is uncompressed and piped into svnadmin to load it.

svnadmin create reponame && ssh user@source_host “svnadmin dump /path/reponame | gzip -c” | gunzip -c | svnadmin load /dest_path/reponame

If the local repository has already been made this whole command will refuse to work. You can change the && to a semicolon ; if you wish it to perform the transfer regardless of the destination repository’s existence. svnadmin load can apparently load into a non-empty repository.

By: Abbas

Abbas — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:44:36 +0000

Thanks for the info! It worked like a charm and saved me time. People on the internet – you are just great!

By: mark

mark — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 19:03:21 +0000

You can also pipe to the unix command “split” instead of directly outputting to a file

svnadmin dump /var/lib/svn/repositories/repo_name | split -b 700m – mysvnproj.dump.tar.gz

This will give you 700 megabyte tar.gz files with the extension “tar.gzaa”, “tar.gzab”, etc. (note the space dash space to read from the pipe) You can add an extra dot if you want. Then, at your other server:

cat mysvnproj.dump.tar.gz* | svnadmin load /var/lib/svn/repositories/repo_name

Do this after creating your new repo as per the original article.

By: links for 2007-10-27 « dstelow notes…

links for 2007-10-27 « dstelow notes… — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 00:26:22 +0000

[...] How to Move a Subversion Repository (tags: dev sourcecontrol svn opensource) [...]

By: Al

Al — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 07:35:01 +0000

I needed to move my repository to a raided drive on the same system, so I just stopped the SVN service, copied the files to my new drive. I deleted the old SVN service and created a new service with the path to the new repository location. It seems to be working fine. The reason I did this is because I have quite a few projects that I keep as separate repositories, so it would’ve been painful to move each and everyone of them (20+). Also, recreating the project on the same server, would mean that I’d have to deal with renaming things, etc., etc.

By: roger pack

roger pack — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 03:38:43 +0000

To decrease the size you can create a dump of only diffs, too :)

By: Polymorphic Podcast : Podcast: Subversion Quickstart for .NET Developers

Polymorphic Podcast : Podcast: Subversion Quickstart for .NET Developers — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 14:05:50 +0000

[...] [...]

By: Koz

Koz — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 23:19:12 +0000

Wicked, this is brilliant, saved my butt cheerz

By: Larry Rubin

Larry Rubin — Wed, 09 May 2007 02:59:22 +0000

Worked like a charm. Thanks!

If you’re using svn w/ trac you will need to a) update your trac conf to point to the new repo location, and b) resync trac

By: Eric

Eric — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 05:46:12 +0000

This tutorial is great, however, I think the change directory step is not necessary, it can be simplified as:

svnadmin create new-repository-path
svnadmin load new-repository-path

By: Kris Bravo

Kris Bravo — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 01:56:54 +0000

May want to mention how to beging using the new location if you already have a working copy checked out & the url changed.

By: Dan Wang

Dan Wang — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 23:10:51 +0000

I tried this procedure on Windows XP and everything works up till the point of svnadmin load. I can see on the DOS console the different revisions being sucked in. However, if I try a svn checkout from the newly loaded repository, the system keeps complaining that the repository is not found.
I check and find that under the db subdirectory, there are a number of revisions as I expected.
Any suggestions?

By: bryan

bryan — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 05:11:19 +0000

thanks, it works :)