Concise command line for subversion copy (branch)

Question

All examples of svn branching I have seen so far look like this svn cp -m 'Making test branch' svn://svnrepo/hellosite svn://svnrepo/hellosite2

So in order to branch I need to specify full URL of remote repository every time. But:

Working copy is associated with one single remote repository. Even svn switch is considered to be advanced "surgical" operation.
Branching of remote urls in same repository as working copy is always the case (at least I have never needed to branch in repository that is completely unrelated to current one).
Copying between repositories is not supported (right?).
Information about remote repository is available: see svn info.

So why in the world should I type complete URLs every time?!! Or do I miss something? Is there some shortcut that allows referring current remote repository? Something like svn cp -m 'Making test branch' //hellosite //hellosite2

You can make an alias: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3819343/make-alias-for-svn-repository/3966311#3966311 — CharlesB, May 18 '11 at 13:04

score 44 · Accepted Answer · answered May 18 '11 at 13:37

Using SVN 1.6 or later, if you're inside a working copy at the time then you can use the caret notation as a short-cut to the repository root, e.g.

svn cp -m 'Making test branch' ^/trunk ^/branches/hellosite

Note that on Windows at least you'll need to surround the ^/trunk in double quotes to get it through the shell.

svn cp -m "Making test branch" "^/trunk" "^/branches/hellosite"

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:17

3

You can simply add an alias to your shell. See this this SO post for example.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:17

Community

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answered May 18 '11 at 13:39

CharlesB

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Gregor · Answer 3 · 2015-08-11T13:02:51.290

I've created a small bash alias file for convenient svn branching on the shell. (You can get the full file here: https://github.com/grexi/snippets/blob/master/svnaliases)

function getrepo {
    REPO=`LANG=C svn info | grep "Repository Root"`
    echo ${REPO:17}
}

function getrepobase {
   if [ "`LANG=C svn info | grep -c Relative`" -gt 0 ]; 
   then
      parent=".."
      grandparent=".."
      if [ -d ".svn" ]; then
          echo ""
      else
          while [ ! -d "$grandparent/.svn" ]; do
              parent=$grandparent
              grandparent="$parent/.."
          done
          echo $grandparent
     fi
   else
      parent=""
      grandparent="."
      while [ -d "$grandparent/.svn" ]; do
          parent=$grandparent
          grandparent="$parent/.."
      done
      echo $parent
   fi
}

function _svnbr {
    if [ $# != 2 ]; then
        echo "Usage: $0 branchname \"commit message\""
    else
        REPO=$(getrepo)
        if [ -z "$REPO" ]; then
            echo "You are not inside a svn working copy"
            return;
        fi
        svn copy $REPO/trunk $REPO/branches/$1 -m "$2"
        svn switch $REPO/branches/$1 $(getrepobase)
    fi
}
alias svnbr=_svnbr

Creating a branch now turns into

svnbr "branchname" "commit message"

inside your working directory.

Starting with SVN 1.8, the above approach won't work (since SVN now uses a single .svn subdirectory). The linked-to GitHub repo contains an updated version of the script that handles this, though. — Frank Schmitt, Aug 11 '15 at 12:40

score -4 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 20 '13 at 14:37

-4

This is one of the many weird SVN-isms that you will need to get used to.

Your assumption that you need to specify the full URL in both arguments is absolutely correct.

edited Apr 20 '13 at 14:37

answered May 18 '11 at 12:55

Floyd Price

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3

Concise command line for subversion copy (branch)

4 Answers4