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Hi guys,

I've just moved to subversion. I've read somewhere svn transfers and stores data in a compressed form. I know compressed transfers mean 'http:' compression with apache.

Does storage compression mean lazy copies and keeping only deltas for revisions, or is there a real compression like gzip used by subversion live for the storage? Currently in the repo db, I can see submitted text files in the clear text form. I use Windows for the server.

Thanks!

+1  A: 

I'm not certain of the details, but I expect Subversion might store the current copy of the file uncompressed, while compressing previous revisions to save space. Subversion also uses techniques like "skip deltas" to reduce the amount of storage required for past revisions while still offering good performance.

In any case, the format of the repository database is subject to change, and does regularly. I've never been concerned about exactly how files are stored in Subversion. They just are, and that's pretty much all that matters.

Greg Hewgill
Thanks for your reply, Greg. I did some tests on a test repo but haven't seen a compression on previous or current versions yet, it may also be due to the very small size of test files. My concern is; if it supports native, live compression, and I don't see it because of my config or the build config, I would like to do anything I can to take this advantage and fully utilize svn.
SuperDuck
As far as I know, there aren't any compression options for the Subversion server. It just does the right thing.
Greg Hewgill