OSDL's SVN policies

Overview

This document concentrates on the way OSDL uses SVN services.

Choices

Every OSDL's source file (code, but also documentation, web page and so on) is to be registered under SVN.

The reasons for their storing in control version are:

1. avoiding loosing them: there is nothing as painful in development when sources are lost. SourceForge's servers are reliable and regularly archived. And thanks to SVN, many people who performed a checkout of our sources have their own copies.
2. keeping all the versions available: for every file, every version can be retrieved, thus all thier history can be used, allowing roll-backs.
3. sharing the sources: control versions systems allow users to work collaboratively on a project, in a groupware-fashion

However, as opposed to source file, no generated file (like objects [*.o, *.lo], libraries [*.a, *.la, *.so] or executables) should be versioned, since they are to be rebuilt using the sources. Furthermore their size is often significant.

At the moment, the OSDL team uses a unique SVN repository, in SourceForge [browse].

OSDL is based on Ceylan, whose counterpart SVN informations are here.

Accessing our main repository

To perform a check-out of all sources, just use:

svn co https://osdl.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/osdl osdl

Quick overview of the structure of our SVN repository

Basically, the work (development, documentation, and so on) being made by the OSDL team (including our club for game creation) respects the following structure:

• OSDL: our generic multimedia library
• Tools: some tools we had to develop or improve for our own needs (such as yag-osdl)

Dealing with security and user-friendly approach

By default, each operation involving the SourceForge's repository triggers a SSH-handshake that leads to the asking of the user's password. As oftenly many SVN operations have to be chained, it becomes a growing pain to have to type one's password many times.

There is hopefully a quick work-around described here, which allows to export one's public key to SourceForge' servers. That way, one's machine can self-authenticate the user without any password being typed, allowing a more user-friendly SVN usage.

More informations

• Sourceforge's overview of Subversion (SVN)
• SVN 1.4 online manual

Please react !

If you have information more detailed or more recent than those presented in this document, if you noticed errors, neglects or points insufficiently discussed, drop us a line!