Question

I created SVN just now and my initial project is in there… and so is a working copy I just created with “Branch/Tag” in Eclipse (Subclipse)…

anyhow… my svnroot folder is only 256kb so I’m wondering if all my data is there, or if some is somewhere else?

Can I just zip this svnroot folder and all my SVN data is backed up… I could just unzip that to a new svnroot folder on another computer and would be able to re-created my SVN repository with my 2 copies of my project in there?

Please confirm… I want to make sure I’m backing up the correct stuff… thanks.

p.s. I created my svnroot folder like this:

svnadmin create /Users/me/svnroot 

Answer 1

Subversion stores your data in its repository in a compressed manner. So, even after the first commit, the size of the whole repository might be less than the total size of the files in your working directory.

As mentioned in the comments, it’s not recommended to do just a straight “copy” of the Subversion folder for backups. Use either svnadmin dump or svnadmin hotcopy as explained in What is the best way to backup subversion repositories?.