VisualSVN raw/original files backup

Question

We are trying out VisualSVN and tortoiseSVN for version control. VisualSVN on windows 2008 server and tortoiseSVN on windows Xp / 7

I wanted a way to backup the repo maintained on the VisualSVN server, Whatever articles i read, I am not able to get any way of backing up my original raw files, Most of them show how to backup the database files which svn creates, but I would like to backup my original non-encripted files.

As I am fairly new to SVN, Please proivde with a little detailed explanation on how should I do this.

ThankYou

Answer 1

Two ways of getting unversioned backup of raw-data from SVN-repo

• File or set of unrelated files for revision REV

svn cat URL/OF/FILE/IN/REPO@REV > FILE

• Subtree or the whole tree of repo (for revision REV aslo)

svn export URL/OF/REPO@REV LOCAL-DIR

For latest (i.e. HEAD) revision you just skip @REV part in commands

Answer 2

I'm not quite sure what you want - do you want to backup every version of every file sent to the server, or have a copy of the latest file saved somewhere?

Either way, you're not going to have much luck - the client only sends the changes (the delta) to the server, so even if you set a server-side hook that wrote the revision data to disk, it'd only write the changes.

What you could do is start a new client, in the post-commit hook, you could trigger the client to get the latest revision that's stored in the server (you'd make the client do svn update on an existing checkout, or svn export to grab a read-only copy).

Generally though, you do not need to do this. SVN is very safe, so you really only need to look at backing up the repo. My favoured way of doing this is to run svnsync so you always have an exact copy.

Answer 3

If you look for a one-time backup, you could use Backup-SvnRepository PowerShell cmdlet. To recover the repository, use Restore-SvnRepository. These backup cmdlets are available beginning with version 3.6.

Beginning with VisualSVN Server 3.6 version, the server includes a built-in scheduled repository backup and restore feature. Moreover, the 3.6 release adds scheduled verification of SVN repositories.

Setting up scheduled repository backup and verification for your Subversion repositories is only a matter of minutes. For step-by-step instructions, please see the article KB106: Getting Started with Backup and Restore.

Download the latest version of VisualSVN Server from the main download page.