Subversion folders and files specification

Question

I'm looking for .svn folder content description or specification. Could you suggest something? I'm going to write an app which operates with working directory.

Thank you!

Answer 1

Well, the SVN book has a basic overview of the .svn metadata, at least in terms of what's in there, but it's not byte-for-byte specification. Whether such a thing actually exists anywhere (aside from in the Subversion source code), I don't know.

However, the book goes on to mention that, "Developers are encouraged to use Subversion's public APIs, or the tools that Subversion provides, to access and manipulate the working copy data, instead of directly reading or modifying those files."

Is this an option? You might be able to use tools such as svn info, svn stat, svn diff, or svnlook to see what's going on and manipulate working copies.

Answer 2

The only documentation there is about this, is in the Subversion sourcecode. But I recommend not to look in there yourself and just take a library to do that work for you.

Since subversion 1.0 there were some huge changes and with Subversion 1.7 everything will be completely different from where it is today. The Subversion C api, and wrappers around that like JavaHL and SharpSvn give you a documented way to support previous and future versions of the Workingcopy.