The user can control many optional behaviors that Subversion provides. Users can apply these options to all Subversion operations. So, rather than forcing users to remember command-line arguments for specifying these options, and to use them for each and every operation they perform, Subversion uses configuration files, segregated into a Subversion configuration area. The Subversion configuration area is a two-tiered hierarchy of option names and their values. Usually, this boils down to a special directory that contains configuration files (the first tier), which are just text files in standard INI format (with sections providing the second tier). These files can be easily edited using your favorite text editor (such as Emacs or vi), and contain directives read by the client to determine which of several optional behaviors the user prefers. 7.1.1 Configuration Area LayoutThe first time that the svn command-line client is executed, it creates a per-user configuration area. On Unix-like systems, this area appears as a directory named .subversion in the user's home directory. On Win32 systems, Subversion creates a folder named Subversion, typically inside the Application Data area of the user's profile directory (which, by the way, is usually a hidden directory). However, on this platform the exact location differs from system to system, and is dictated by the Windows registry.[1] We will refer to the per-user configuration area using its Unix name, .subversion.
In addition to the per-user configuration area, Subversion also recognizes the existence of a system-wide configuration area. This gives system administrators the ability to establish defaults for all users on a given machine. Note that the system-wide configuration area does not alone dictate mandatory policy the settings in the per-user configuration area override those in the system-wide one, and command-line arguments supplied to the svn program have the final word on behavior. On Unix-like platforms, the system-wide configuration area is expected to be the /etc/subversion directory; on Windows machines, it again looks for a Subversion directory inside the common Application Data location (again, as specified by the Windows Registry). Unlike the per-user case, the svn program does not attempt to create the system-wide configuration area. The configuration area currently contains three files two configuration files (config and servers) and a README.txt file which describes the INI format. At the time of their creation, the files contain default values for each of the supported Subversion options, mostly commented out and grouped with textual descriptions about how the values for the key affect Subversion's behavior. To change a certain behavior, you need only to load the appropriate configuration file into a text editor, and modify the desired option's value. If you wish to have the default configuration settings restored, you can simply remove (or rename) your configuration directory, and then run some innocuous svn command, such as svn version. A new configuration directory with the default contents will be created. The per-user configuration area also contains a cache of authentication data. The auth directory holds a set of subdirectories that contain pieces of cached information used by Subversion's various supported authentication methods. This directory is created in such a way that only the user herself has permission to read its contents. 7.1.2 Configuration and the Windows RegistryIn addition to the usual INI-based configuration area, Subversion clients running on Windows platforms may also use the Windows Registry to hold the configuration data. The option names and their values are the same as in the INI files. The file/section hierarchy is preserved as well, though addressed in a slightly different fashion in this schema, files and sections are just levels in the registry key tree. Subversion looks for system-wide configuration values under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Tigris.org\Subversion key. For example, the global-ignores option, which is in the miscellany section of the config file, would be found at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Tigris.org\Subversion\Config\Miscellany\global-ignores. Per-user configuration values should be stored under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Tigris.org\Subversion. Registry-based configuration options are parsed before their file-based counterparts, so are overridden by values found in the configuration files. In other words, configuration priority is granted in the following order on a Windows system:
Also, the Windows Registry doesn't really support the notion of something being commented out. However, Subversion will ignore any option key whose name begins with a hash (#) character. This allows you to effectively comment out a Subversion option without deleting the entire key from the Registry, obviously simplifying the process of restoring that option. The svn command-line client never attempts to write to the Windows Registry, and will not attempt to create a default configuration area there. You can create the keys you need using the REGEDIT program. Alternatively, you can create a .reg file, and then double-click on that file from the Explorer shell, which merges the data into your registry (see Example 7-1). Example 7-1. Sample registration entries (.reg) fileREGEDIT4 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Tigris.org\Subversion\Servers\groups] [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Tigris.org\Subversion\Servers\global] "#http-proxy-host"="" "#http-proxy-port"="" "#http-proxy-username"="" "#http-proxy-password"="" "#http-proxy-exceptions"="" "#http-timeout"="0" "#http-compression"="yes" "#neon-debug-mask"="" "#ssl-authority-files"="" "#ssl-trust-default-ca"="" "#ssl-client-cert-file"="" "#ssl-client-cert-password"="" [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Tigris.org\Subversion\Config\auth] "#store-auth-creds"="no" [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Tigris.org\Subversion\Config\helpers] "#editor-cmd"="notepad" "#diff-cmd"="" "#diff3-cmd"="" "#diff3-has-program-arg"="" [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Tigris.org\Subversion\Config\miscellany] "#global-ignores"="*.o *.lo *.la #*# .*.rej *.rej .*~ *~ .#*" "#log-encoding"="" "#use-commit-times"="" "#template-root"="" "#enable-auto-props"="" [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Tigris.org\Subversion\Config\tunnels] [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Tigris.org\Subversion\Config\auto-props] The previous example shows the contents of a .reg file that contains some of the most commonly used configuration options and their default values. Note the presence of both system-wide (for network proxy-related options) and per-user settings (editor programs and password storage, among others). Also note that all the options are effectively commented out. You need only to remove the hash (#) character from the beginning of the option names, and set the values as you desire. 7.1.3 Configuration OptionsIn this section, we discuss the specific runtime configuration options that are currently supported by Subversion. 7.1.3.1 ServersThe servers file contains Subversion configuration options related to the network layers. There are two special section names in this file groups and global. The groups section is essentially a cross-reference table. The keys in this section are the names of other sections in the file; their values are globs textual tokens which possibly contain wildcard characters that are compared against the hostnames of the machine to which Subversion requests are sent: [groups] beanie-babies = *.red-bean.com collabnet = svn.collab.net [beanie-babies] ... [collabnet] ... When Subversion is used over a network, it attempts to match the name of the server it is trying to reach with a group name under the groups section. If a match is made, Subversion then looks for a section in the servers file whose name is the matched group's name. From that section it reads the actual network configuration settings. The global section contains the settings that are meant for all of the servers not matched by one of the globs under the groups section. The options available in this section are exactly the same as those valid for the other server sections in the file (except, of course, the special groups section), and are as follows:
7.1.3.2 ConfigThe config file contains the rest of the currently available Subversion run-time options, those not related to networking. There are only a few options in use at this time, but they are again grouped into sections in expectation of future additions. The auth section contains settings related to Subversion's authentication and authorization against the repository. It contains:
The helpers section controls which external applications Subversion uses to accomplish its tasks. Valid options in this section are as follows:
The tunnels section allows you to define new tunnel schemes for use with svnserve and svn:// client connections. For more details, see Section 6.3.3. The miscellany section is where everything that doesn't belong elsewhere winds up.[2] In this section, you can find:
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