Subversion : automating svn:keywords

We’ll see here how you can automate the addition of SVN keywords to your newly added or imported file in your Subversion repository.

Changes are being made on the client computer, NOT the repository. It means you need to apply the following to every computer accessing the SVN repository.

For files already in the repository, you will need to manually set the keywords this way :
svn propset svn:keywords "Id" file.sh

To set scripts as executable :
svn propset svn:executable ON file.sh

1. Enabling auto properties

Edit ~/.subversion/config

Under the miscellany section, set enable-auto-props to yes

[miscellany]
enable-auto-props = yes

Then, you should find an auto-prop section :

[auto-props]
### The format of the entries is:
### file-name-pattern = propname[=value][;propname[=value]...]
### The file-name-pattern can contain wildcards (such as '*' and
### '?'). All entries which match will be applied to the file.
### Note that auto-props functionality must be enabled, which
### is typically done by setting the 'enable-auto-props' option.
# *.c = svn:eol-style=native
# *.cpp = svn:eol-style=native
# *.h = svn:eol-style=native
# *.dsp = svn:eol-style=CRLF
# *.dsw = svn:eol-style=CRLF
# *.sh = svn:eol-style=native;svn:executable
# *.txt = svn:eol-style=native
# *.png = svn:mime-type=image/png
# *.jpg = svn:mime-type=image/jpeg
# Makefile = svn:eol-style=native

If I wanted to have the “Id” keyword automatically added to *.sh files, I’d uncomment the *.sh line and add the keyword values, so it’d look like this :
*.sh = svn:eol-style=native;svn:executable;svn:keywords=Id

2. Editing your files

Just put somewhere in your bash script the “$Id$” keyword, add and commit :

$ vi test.sh

#!/bin/bash
# SVN : $Id$
echo "This is a test"

Add and commit :
$ svn add test.sh
A test.sh
$ svn commit -m “Testing auto keywords”
Sending test.sh
Transmitting file data .vi
Committed revision 30.

Once commited, the file would look like this :

#!/bin/bash
# SVN : $Id: test.sh 30 2007-01-10 23:34:59Z user $
echo "This is a test"

3. Verifying the properties of a file :

If you want to check out the properties set on a file, just do :
$ svn proplist test.sh
Properties on ‘test.sh’:
svn:executable
svn:keywords
svn:eol-style

If you want to check out the keywords set on that file :
$ svn proplist test.sh -v
Properties on ‘test.sh’:
svn:executable : *
svn:keywords : Id
svn:eol-style : native