SVN Working Copies on Network Share

Question

Hi all,

Ok, I'm getting my version control processes in order for my web team.

I know ideally each user would have a full working copy of their code on their local machine.

Unfortunately for a lot of our web apps they have additional server specific DB or other system integration requirements that cannot be replicated on a user's workstation (i.e. some servers just wont install on XP, vista etc.)

I'm looking at setting up an area on one of my servers that acts as a working copy for each user but still resides on the network.

i.e.

/SVRROOT/ - Dev1 Working Copy - Dev2 Working Copy - Dev3 Working Copy

This means that each user will have their own working space (as per SVN best practices) but it will reside on the network.

Does anyone see a problem with this model?

Thanks,

Ed

Answer 1

You may find that the performance of Subversion operations over the network is much slower than the performance of the same Subversion operation locally. I've run into this problem in Unix land with working directories mounted over NFS, but I suspect you may run into the same situation using Windows shares.

It would be worth comparing the performance in different situations to see what the impact will be.

Answer 2

Some subversion actions will perform a little bit better if you map the network folder to a drive letter. The apache Apr library performs some extra network requests when you use a unc path instead of a drive letter.

Generally you should just use a local folder for your working copy as the idea is that you can suffice with just backing up the server.

Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 allow most web server scenarios with its mini webserver and most databases can be accessed over the network (or setup per developer). This separates the developers from a single point of failure.

With everybody on a single server a single developer can crash the webserver/database server all developers are using...

Answer 3

Hi all, I have the same problem. I was create a svn server and after that for example I have two computers with TortoiseSVN. The server must be map ot some network drive and work with mapped folder. When I create a local folder and SVNupdate it from Tortoise everything work perfect. How I can create a working copy on the svn server to access from there and after that to map it on some network drive. I have read some article on the web with some ftp servers but I can`t understand it - FTP and SVN I hopeful we have find some solution of the problem. If someone find other way for that please write it here. Thanks a lot. Have a nice day.