Using Subversion with DropBox

Question

Hi all,

Is it a bad idea to use DropBox as a backup system for Subversion repositories?

Has anyone tried using Subversion with an an online file sharing utility like DropBox? What's your experiences?

My concern is whether this will work - mainly because Subversion maintains locks and it's very specific about it. I'm not sure if DropBox and Subversion can both work together?

p.s. I'm thinking of using this for my Xcode projects, and no, i don't want to use github because it's not free - you can't keep your repositories Private with the free account (and other reasons).

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References:

DropBox (file sync, sharing, and online backup)

Subversion (open source version control system)

Answer 1

I think it will probably work out OK if you're not accessing the repository from different locations, and let is synchronize before using it. It doesn't seem like a very stable solution though.

Is there any reason you can't us a publicly available URL for your repository?

Answer 2

I've got Dropbox, SVN and Xcode working fine here, I've had no problems what so ever.

You don't even need to be careful about which machine you commit/update from as Dropbox keeps EVERYTHING synchronised.

Answer 3

My suggestion is to use dropbox together with an encryption tool such as TrueCrypt. In this way you would have a safe storage on the cloud.

SVN works perfectly in a TrueCrypt disk.

If you need to access the repository at the same time on multiple location I would recommend of using a subversion host provider. DropBox can get confused if two persons are modifying the same file at once.

http://wiki.dropbox.com/TipsAndTricks/IncreasePrivacyAndSafety

http://www.randomwire.com/storing-sensitive-data-in-the-cloud

Answer 4

Depending on how many files you are syncing it may end up doing a lot of file transferring. (Remember, you only have 200MB on Dropbox without any additional storage bonuses on the free account.) This means all the .svn (or _svn) files will also be synced, in effect doubling the amount of files it needs to keep updated.

If you don't need to move whole directories around in your tree once the initial sync is complete, then transfers should be respectable.

I've tried this myself for some projects and it worked okay, but in the end I think the best way to use Subversion repositories and Dropbox together is to use them for deployment builds. I wouldn't just set Dropbox to sync with my working folder. Use Dropbox to sync up at the end of the day by copying in the working folder to the actual Dropbox folder at scheduled intervals, thereby limiting the amount of constant network traffic the former might incur.