Getting the last revision number in SVN?

Question

Using PHP, Perl, or Python (preferably PHP) I need a way to query an SVN database and find out the last revision number sent to SVN. I don't need anything other than that. It needs to be non-intensive (so I do it every 5 minutes as a Cron, SVN's performance cannot be effected).

SVN is located on my Intranet, but not my specific computer.

I have SVN installed, but no bindings installed for PHP/Perl/Python. I'm running Windows XP, but I would prefer a platform independent solution that can work in Linux. If you have a Linux only (or XP only) solution that is also helpful, though not ideal.

Answer 1

I think you are looking for

svn info -r HEAD

can you shell to that command?

you'll probably need to supply a login credentials with repo as well

Answer 2

Looks like there is an entry in the official FAQ for this. The source code is in C but the same principle applies, as outlined here in this mailing list post.

Answer 3

This should work in bash, from a working directory. I've used it in windows with unixutils installed.

svn info |grep Revision: |cut -c11-

Answer 4

<?php
$url = 'your repository here';
$output = `svn info $url`;
echo "<pre>$output</pre>";
?>

You can get the output in xml like so:

$output = `svn info $url --xml`;

If there is an error then the output will be directed to stderr. To capture stderr in your output use thusly:

$output = `svn info $url 2>&1`;

Answer 5

svn info -r 'HEAD'

This will give you the latest revision number at the head of your repository.

There are some nice blog posts about integrating subversion numbers into your build script:

• Getting Subversion Revision in Ant
• Automatic Build Sub-Versioning in Xcode

Answer 6

You're looking for a call that's similar to the commandline call

svn info URL

It seems that this is possible using the pysvn library, there's a recipe that should help you get started. I'm not sure if there's something similar for php.

If you need to resort to calling the svn binary yourself, make sure to use the --xml parameter to get the result as xml, that should be easier to parse than the commandline output

Answer 7

The best tool is svnversion, that comes with subversion and produces output like 968:1000M. The docs say:

The version number will be a single number if the working copy is single revision, unmodified, not switched and with an URL that matches the TRAIL_URL argument. If the working
copy is unusual the version number will be more complex:

4123:4168     mixed revision working copy
4168M         modified working copy
4123S         switched working copy
4123:4168MS   mixed revision, modified, switched working copy

Answer 8

Someone else beat me to posting the answer about svnversion, which is definitely the best solution if you have a working copy (IIRC, it doesn't work with URLs). I'll add this: if you're on the server hosting SVN, the best way is to use the svnlook command. This is the command you use when writing a hook script to inspect the repository (and even the current transaction, in the case of pre-commit hooks). You can type svnlook help for details. You probably want to use the svnlook youngest command. Note that it requires direct access to the repo directory, so it must be used on the server.

Answer 9

Would the following work?

svnlook youngest <repo-path>

It returns a single revision number.