How to move SVN repository in hard disk

Question

I have an SVN repository on my hard disk in a directory like:

/home/Desktop/path/to/old_repo

But I need to move this repository to another place

/home/Downloads/path/to/new_repo

an remove all the files in the old directory. I tried using svnadmin dump, then svn create and svn load, but when I remove the old_repo folder they stop working. In fact, they do not contain any piece of code and just give me some information about log and status.

How can I move this repository to a completely different location having it work independently (I want to remove the old one)?

Answer 1

If you use file:/// access to repository, you can

• Move directory to new location
• Relocate all Working Copy in order to reflect new URL

If you use any network-type access (svn:// or http://) to repository, you can

• Move directory to new location
• Change settings of used daemon in order to reflect new physical location of repository

Answer 2

Step 1. Stop all services and anything that might write to the repository.

Step 2. Copy (as in OS cp or drag and drop folder) the repository directory to the new location.

Step 3: Update the service's configuration to refer to the new repository (eg Apache conf, svnserver conf or VisualSVN GUI).

Step 4: restart the service and let people carry on using it.

There's nothing special about a SVN server repository, its a self-contained directory with normal files in it. There's no registry or /etc conf files that need updating. YTou do need to update whatever access system you use to get at it (eg http or svn protocols go through a server, either apache or svnserve) so you need to tell them the new location, but that's it.