Comments on: Subversion for web development: Part 3

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 22:59:51 +0000

@John – In the second part of the series I mentioned how I go about putting a datavase in the repository. It’s an entirely manual process, I export the db as an .sql file, and copy it into a /db folder which sits in my repo trunk, overwriting the exisiting .sql file at that location.

My approach does require that you remember to export the db regularly and copy in into the repository, which isn’t ideal.

I work in a team of one, so that suits my needs. For larger teams, where several people are working on the same database, I imagine it might not be adequate.

If you know of a more elegant solution, let me know.

By: John

John — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 22:11:20 +0000

This was super useful. Thanks a lot. I would recommend explaining a little bit more about putting the database into the repository and how do u know that version is the same version as the code version?

Regards

By: elmimmo

elmimmo — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:34:00 +0000

I just started using SVN to work on a highly customized Joomla project. I am working with more people, all of which are as new to version control as I am.

I think I understood the overall workflow of everybody working in their own working copy, controlling its versions of files, checking out, committing, updating to merge everybody’s work… while they all work on the same files.

I cannot figure out how one integrates the database part into the whole picture. Sure, everybody has their own working copy of the file tree, but SVN does not take care of versioning and merging the database. The code in the file tree, though, depends on a specific state of the database.

If everybody, then, does their own modifcations to their own a-la-working-copy database, how do you integrate all the deltas? If, instead, everybody should plug into the same central database, and the code in their working copy depends on a specific state of the database, how one goes without being forced to continually update because the website breaks as the rest of the team works their way?

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:40:20 +0000

@Herb – I’m pleased you found the article helpful

Regarding hiding .svn directories, you’ll see from my comment above that it’s something I glossed over since that deployment approach is not part of my workflow. But since two people have mentioned it now, I’ve modified my article to mention this important point!

By: Herb Tucker

Herb Tucker — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:20:54 +0000

Thanks for a very helpful article. I’ve been perusing the web for many many hours looking for specifically how to setup a workflow for utilizing svn in web development.
There are oodles of resources on using svn but I’ve been hard pressed to find specifics like you’ve provided as to where you place the WCs and how to make the dev server files versioned in svn. Again, thanks for the detail.
One thing I would correct in your article; when you do an export from your WC using svn export, it creates a clean directory without any .svn files. If you do go with using a WC on your production server (pros/cons both ways whether to update or export, I’m still not sure which way I’ll go) you can use a little .htaccess magic to make those .svn files invisible to the outside world with mod_rewrite;
RewriteEngine on

# Hide .SVN Folders
RewriteRule ^(.*/)*\.svn/ / [F,L]

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 06:26:18 +0000

@andrisp That’s a good point about needing to hide .svn folders when using live checkout. I kind of glossed over that side of things, because it isn’t the deployment approach I use myself.

For anyone wondering, the .svn folders should be hidden using .htaccess, see http://claudio.cicali.name/post/2005/08/protecting-svn-entries/ for instructions.

By: andrisp

andrisp — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 06:19:32 +0000

Thanks for the articles.

My approach is to store all project files in apache webroot directory. For example, D:\htdocs\project_name\public_html is the dir for www files, all other project’s files are kept in D:\htdocs\project_name\. Access to my Apache is denied outside from my network to protect sensitive data.

Also you should make clear that if you choose to update live server by checking out directly on it, then it will also have .svn directories which should be made hidden for public.