How to use subversion Ctypes Python Bindings?

Question

Hello.

Subversion 1.6 introduce something that is called 'Ctypes Python Binding', but it is not documented. Is it any information available what this bindings are and how to use it? For example, i have a fresh windows XP and want to control SVN repository using subversiion 1.6 and this mysterious python bindings. What exactly i need to download/install/compile in order to do something like

import svn from almighty_ctype_subversion_bindings
svn.get( "\\rep\\project" )

And how is this connected to pysvn project? Is this a same technology, or different technologies?

Answer 1

The whole point of ctypes is that you shouldn't need to have to compile anything anywhere. That said, the readme for the bindings mentions some dependencies and a build step.

The bindings can be found in the Subversion source distribution at least, in subversion/bindings/ctypes-python/, with a distutils setup.py.

They seem to be a successor / alternative of sorts to pysvn.

Answer 2

I looked into the python binding for subversion, but in the end I found it to be simpler to just invoke svn.exe like this:

(stdout, stderr, err) = execute('svn export "%s" "%s"' \
   % (exportURL, workingCopyFolder))

where execute is a function like this:

def execute(cmd):
    import subprocess
    proc = subprocess.Popen(\
          cmd, shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
    (stdout, stderr) = proc.communicate()
    return (stdout, stderr, proc.returncode)

The output of svn.exe is designed to be easily parsed if necessary. There is even a --xml output option.

Answer 3

You need the Subversion source distribution, Python (>= 2.5), and ctypesgen.

Instructions for building the ctypes bindings are here.

You will end up with a package called csvn, examples of it's use are here.