SVN Read/Write proxy - two way svnsync

Question

At work we have a SVN server. We access it through TortoiseSVN, VisualSVN Server and Eclipse (with Subclipse plug-in for SVN integration). The office SVN server runs only during the day and is turned off during the night. We have a fair pain with operations in keeping the server running for full 24 hours.

The main team works only during the day, but an small team works in the night. They dont have access to the SVN server because the server is shut down.

I could use svnsync to set up a read only repository on a hosted server. We do have a VPS. But we need a commitable read/write server. the night-time server and day-time server can sync with each other.

The whole SVN server could be shifted to the VPS, but it is slow and we do do like our GBps Lan.

Any Ideas..??

Answer 1

What? They close down the Subversion server at night?

Subversion is a centralized repository. This isn't a case of someone in India trying to access a repository in California over a very slow connection. If this office simply turns off the lights at 5pm, there's really not much you can do. I doubt they want pay for Wandisco's product if they don't want to pay to keep the server up when people they pay have to work.

The possible solutions:

• Move to a distributed system like Git. You could pull from their Git repository into another shared repository, and then pull and push your changes to that second repository as you work. In the morning, you could push from that repository back to the main corporate repository. Of course, this means setting up a second repository. And, Git isn't magical. It can't pull from a repository that's turned off. You'd have to make sure to get the latest changes before they shut down.

• Another solution that doesn't involve moving to Git is using git-svn. Git is a bit more complex than Subversion simply because there are now multiple repositories you're dealing with. If you have a company that shuts down needed resources, I can't believe that they will be able to maintain a Git repository. You use git-svn to pull a project as you would if it was a Git repository, then you can use your local repos as Git repos which means you can commit and checkout changes, make branches, etc. And, share changes between your coworkers.

• Maybe the best solution is to use a cloud service like Amazon to make a virtual host that can stay up 24 hours and have some expertise that can make sure it stays up. This way, they can still turn off the lights at 5pm, but the Subversion repository will stay up. Of course, this means that your valuable source will be sitting on some third party's server, but many companies are trusting parties like Amazon to do their virtual computer service.

Answer 2

You can't find solution, which met both requirements

• Free
• Pure Subversion

at the same time.

1. With money you have to see at WaNdisco SVN MultiSite (or SVN MultiSite Plus): note 8-th reason from "10 Reasons to Use SVN MultiSite/SVN MultiSite Plus"
2. With additional (new) tools, you can use (any) DVCS+SVN bridge for the night work - Git+Git-SVN or Mercurial+HGSubversion - and sync LAN and WAN repositories... For developers from Subversion world I'll suggest Mercurial in this solution: more smooth way, less headache (a lot less !!!)