Newbie question

[Craig Rubendall <Cr...@sas.com>]

Hi,

I'm new to Subversion and have a usage scenario in mind that I was wondering whether Subversion will help me or not.

I have a large directory of various files (and file types) and nested subdirectories.   These files are updated by numerous different processes.    What I would like to be able to do is to use the "real" directory as a "working set" and to use subversion to create a "versioned, delta backup" repository of the files in this directory.    Is this a realistic use of subversion?   I know there are probably other true backup tools out there, but this is the first thing that came to my mind.

thanks for any feedback/insight/etc!

Craig

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Re: Newbie question

[Ryan Schmidt <su...@ryandesign.com>]

On Jan 11, 2008, at 08:25, Craig Rubendall wrote:

> I have a large directory of various files (and file types) and  
> nested subdirectories.   These files are updated by numerous  
> different processes.    What I would like to be able to do is to  
> use the "real" directory as a "working set" and to use subversion  
> to create a "versioned, delta backup" repository of the files in  
> this directory.    Is this a realistic use of subversion?   I know  
> there are probably other true backup tools out there, but this is  
> the first thing that came to my mind.

I'm not sure I understand the question... you may need to rephrase it.

Subversion stores changes in the repository as deltas against a  
previous version (not necessarily the immediately previous revision;  
see the skip-deltas algorithm) so it's efficient in that regard.

But once you store something in a repository, it's there "forever"[1]  
and can't be removed. This isn't generally a good property for a  
backup system to have, and Subversion is not intended to be a backup  
system. On the contrary: you should have a strategy by which you back  
up your Subversion repository.

You may also want to consider that a working copy stores two copies  
of each file -- the one you are (or might be) working on, and a  
hidden pristine copy so Subversion can efficiently figure out what  
you changed when you commit. This isn't so great if you're storing  
large files (I don't know if you are).


[1] Things can be removed if you use svnadmin dump / svndumpfilter /  
svnadmin load but that's a tedious process and fraught with  
difficulties.

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