what is the use of svn properties

Question

I have read that using "svn propset", you can set properties for files and directories. What kind of metadata can be attached to these properties? Has anyone used them? If so, please provide me with some examples.

Regards vadiraj

Answer 1

One that I use a lot is svn:executable, which sets the "+x" permission on files on those OSs where such a thing exists:

svn propset svn:executable yes thefile.exe

Answer 2

There are svn specfic properties and then 3rd party / generic properties. The svn specific properties start with svn: and are used by svn itself.

The most common example that I set is svn:ignore, which tells subversion to ignore the directory/file from comparisons and committing into the subversion repo. We use it a lot with IDEs that generate files within the project structure so that you don't have to/want to commit them into the structure.

There is also svn:externals, which is essentially a symlink where you can reference a different subversion repo/directory that will be extracted as the current directory. This works for directories only.

There is also svn:eol-style, which can specify line breaks on a file.

Answer 3

One of the most powerful properties that I use is svn:externals. This will allow you to share files/subdirectories from different locations in the repository (or even other repositories). It is very helpful to have this reuse available.

From the TortoiseSVN help:

Sometimes it is useful to construct a working copy that is made out of a number of different checkouts. For example, you may want different files or subdirectories to come from different locations in a repository, or perhaps from different repositories altogether. If you want every user to have the same layout, you can define the svn:externals properties to pull in the specified resource at the locations where they are needed.

Answer 4

Some people like to set the svn:keywords property to get keyword substitution in their source files. This:

$ svn propset svn:keywords 'HeadURL Id'

for example, will replace $HeadURL$ in your source files with things like:

$HeadURL: http://svn.collab.net/repos/trunk/README $

and $Id$ with:

$Id: calc.c 148 2006-07-28 21:30:43Z sally $

Some people like these, some not.

There's also the svn:mime-type property as discussed over here. This one can be quite useful for marking binary files that should not have their end-of-line markers adjusted to match the local convention.