GLEP: 36
Title: Subversion/CVS for Gentoo Hosted Projects
Version: $Revision: 1.1 $
Author: Aaron Walker <ka0ttic@gentoo.org>
Last-Modified: $Date: 2005/03/13 16:12:53 $
Status: Draft
Type: Standards Track
Content-Type: text/x-rst
Created: 11-Nov-2004
Post-Date: 13-Mar-2005

Abstract
========

Allow maintainers of Gentoo hosted projects to choose between Subversion/CVS.

Motivation
==========

By offering a choice of version control systems, developers who want or need
certain features, can choose which one suits them or their project the best.

In addition, there are quite a few projects that should be Gentoo hosted, but
are hosted elsewhere due to the fact that Subversion is not currently offered.
Examples include the app-vim/gentoo-syntax package ([1]_), and
app-shells/bash-completion-config ([2]_).

Subversion has many advantages over CVS, including changesets, directory 
versioning, atomic commits, versioned metadata, and more efficient branching
and tagging ([3]_).  Despite these advantages, many developers feel that
Subversion is not yet ready for the main tree due to scaling issues.

Specification
=============

The following steps describe, in detail, the process of setting up the
Subversion svnserve daemon (over SSH) and creating new repositories.
Information is already available for converting Gentoo CVS repositories ([4]_)
in addition to the cvs2svn documentation itself ([5]_).

1.  Install dev-util/subversion::

    $ emerge subversion

2.  Write wrapper script for svnserve::


     $ $EDITOR /usr/local/bin/svnserve-ssh && chmod +x \
     > /usr/local/bin/svnserve-ssh

     #!/bin/sh
     umask 002
     exec /usr/bin/svnserve "$@"

3.  Modify the svnserve rc script::

     $ cp /etc/init.d/svnserve /etc/init.d/svnserve-ssh
     $ sed -i 's:/usr/bin/svnserve:/usr/local/bin/svnserve-ssh:' \
     > /etc/init.d/svnserve-ssh

4.  Edit svnserve rc config::

    $ ln -s /etc/init.d/svnserve /etc/init.d/svnserve-ssh
    $ $EDITOR /etc/init.d/svnserve

    SVNSERVE_OPTS="--root=/var/svnroot"
    SVNSERVE_USER="svn"
    SVNSERVE_GROUP="svn"

5.  Add svn group and user::

    $ groupadd svn
    $ useradd svn -d /var/svnroot -s /bin/false -g svn

6.  Create the directory that will hold the repositories::

    $ mkdir -p /var/svnroot/conf

7.  To create new repositories, simply run::

    $ svnadmin create /var/svnroot/<repos>

8.  Make sure newly created/converted repositories have correct permissions.  Of course, Infra might want to do this differently::

    $ chown -Rf svn:users /var/svnroot/<repos>
    $ chmod -Rf 775 /var/svnroot/<repos>

9.  Start it up::

    $ /etc/init.d/svnserve-ssh start
    $ rc-update add svnserve-ssh default

Backwards Compatibility
=======================

Offering a choice between Subversion and CVS should in no way cause any
backwards compatibility issues.  Those developers who prefer to use CVS can
continue to do so without any ill effects.

References
==========

.. [1] app-vim/gentoo-syntax
       http://developer.berlios.de/projects/gentoo-syntax/
.. [2] app-shells/bash-completion-config
       http://developer.berlios.de/projects/bashcomp-config/
.. [3] Version Control with Subversion
       http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.0/ch01s03.html
.. [4] Migration of Gentoo Repositories from CVS to Subversion
       http://dev.gentoo.org/~trapni/CVS2SVN.MIGRATION
.. [5] cvs2svn Documentation
       http://cvs2svn.tigris.org/cvs2svn.html

Copyright
=========

This document has been placed in the public domain.