This documentation was written to describe the 1.6.x series of Subversion. If you are running a different version of Subversion, you are strongly encouraged to visit http://www.svnbook.com/ and instead consult the version of this documentation appropriate for your version of Subversion.

Chapter 3. Advanced Topics

Table of Contents

Revision Specifiers
Revision Keywords
Revision Dates
Peg and Operative Revisions
Properties
Why Properties?
Manipulating Properties
Properties and the Subversion Workflow
Automatic Property Setting
File Portability
File Content Type
File Executability
End-of-Line Character Sequences
Ignoring Unversioned Items
Keyword Substitution
Sparse Directories
Locking
Creating Locks
Discovering Locks
Breaking and Stealing Locks
Lock Communication
Externals Definitions
Changelists
Creating and Modifying Changelists
Changelists As Operation Filters
Changelist Limitations
Network Model
Requests and Responses
Client Credentials
Caching credentials
Disabling password caching
Removing cached credentials
Command-line authentication
Authentication wrap-up
Summary

If you've been reading this book chapter by chapter, from start to finish, you should by now have acquired enough knowledge to use the Subversion client to perform the most common version control operations. You understand how to check out a working copy from a Subversion repository. You are comfortable with submitting and receiving changes using the svn commit and svn update operations. You've probably even developed a reflex that causes you to run the svn status command almost unconsciously. For all intents and purposes, you are ready to use Subversion in a typical environment.

But the Subversion feature set doesn't stop at common version control operations. It has other bits of functionality besides just communicating file and directory changes to and from a central repository.

This chapter highlights some of Subversion's features that, while important, may not be part of the typical user's daily routine. It assumes that you are familiar with Subversion's basic file and directory versioning capabilities. If you aren't, you'll want to first read Chapter 1, Fundamental Concepts and Chapter 2, Basic Usage. Once you've mastered those basics and consumed this chapter, you'll be a Subversion power user!