Subversion: is it possible to backup only the delta since the last backup?

Question

Hello

Does someone here know if it is possible to backup only the part of a subversion reposiotory that has changed since the last backup (that is: the delta)?

Practically, that could be something like doing a full backup every midnight, and a delta every hour. If then a crash occured say at 11:07, one would have to use last midnights full backup and apply all deltas on it, thus only seven minutes would be lost.

Also, if this should be possible, can that be made in a "hot-backup" mode (if that is the correct term for it), that is, while other users are operating, especially checking in, on the repository.

Thaks - René

Answer 1

This is certainly possible. You can do an svnadmin dump -r(from_rev) --incremental to dump all changes from revision *(from_rev)* onwards (if you omit the --incremental, the contents of the *(from_rev)* revision will be dumped fully). All commits are atomic, so you can do a hot-backup this way - commits that are still in progress will not be in this dump but in the next one.

Answer 2

It is simpler and probably almost as efficient to use rsync. rsync also has the benefit that it can do more things, other than the repository.