Question

I’m using Subversion for one of my PHP projects. I have two questions/issues:

1. How are file permissions handled with Subversion? If I have a file that I CHMOD to 755, and I check that file into the repository, will it have the same permissions when it’s checked out into other working copies? If it does not copy, do I really need to change the permissions with every checkout?
2. I have a .htaccess file that I don’t want to check into the repository. If I do an update on a working copy that contains a .htaccess (but the repository doesn’t have that file), will the file be deleted or will the update leave it alone?

Answer 1

1. The only permission Subversion knows about, is the executable bit, which is stored as a special “svn:executable” property. If this property is defined, the file is checked out with the exec bit set. For the rw flags, it depends on your umask. If your umask is for example 0022, a file without the svn:executable bit will be checked out with permission 0644. If your umask is 0002, the permission will be 0664. If svn:executable is set, the exec bit is set for the owner, group and everyone else.
2. If you don’t mark the .htaccess for addition (svn add), svn will leave the file alone. It will not go into the repo when committing, and it will not be deleted when you run svn update. You will see a “?” in front of it when you run “svn status”.