Question

Folks,

Sometimes we need to have the Check-out functionality from VSS to be used in SubVersion, i.e. someone will only check-out a file/folder and nobody else can do that.

I guess this feature is not present in SVN, but can we simulate it ??

Answer 1

You are looking for the lock command. It will prevent other users from making commits to a file or set of files until the lock is released. It is primarily intended for use when modifying binary resources that cannot be merged, such as images.

Advanced Topics: Locking

svn lock

Subversion’s locking feature has two main goals:

• Serializing access to a resource. Allow a user to grab an exclusive right to change to a file in the repository. If Harry reserves the right to change foo.jpg, then Sally should not be able to commit a change to it.
• Aiding communication. Prevent users from wasting time on unmergeable changes. If Harry has reserved the right to change foo.jpg, then it should be easy for Sally to notice this fact and avoid working on the file.