How to checkout SVN repository to the live site for the first time?

Question

I have a subversion repository for my project. Now I need to make my project live. I have FTP details for my live server. So my question is: How do I check my project out for the first time? Do I need to install anything before I can use svn co "repo_url" command on the live server?

Answer 1

Two thing, (this is the policy we follow. So just suggestions)

1. Do not install SVN on your server. Rather, checkout on a build server/machine. Build or package whatever you want to go to the live server with all production parameters. Then Copy (scp, upload) the built package to live server under your server's deployment directory.

2. Since you are going to deploy this code, not further development is going to be in the checked-out stuff. So, export instead of checkout. svn export repo_url -- this will do clean checkout.

Yes, you need Subversion command-line client or any other SVN client like Tortoise SVN.

see here http://subversion.apache.org/packages.html

Hope this helps.

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After much discussion over SVN as release tool: yay or nay? with @Nathan Kidd, I still disagree that SVN is the right tool. It is a version control tool not a deployment/upload tool. Nathan does have solid points but I prefer convention over configuration.

However, one interested in deployment/release cycle can find this slide-show http://www.slideshare.net/wakaleo/automated-deployment-with-maven-going-the-whole-nine-yards helpful. This presentation takes step-by-step process of building the code, releasing the package and deploying. Introduces appropriate tools (many of them are Java specific but worth going over even if you're doing non-Java stuffs) for any given task. I hope this will be helpful.

You can always develop your own custom release process if you have reasons to justify it.