This documentation was written to describe the 1.7.x series of Apache™ 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.
svnsync initialize (init) — Initialize a mirror repository for synchronization from the source repository.
svnsync initialize verifies that a
repository meets the basic requirements of a new mirror
repository and records the initial administrative
information that associates the mirror repository with the
source repository (specified
by SOURCE_URL). This is the
first svnsync operation you run on a
would-be mirror repository.
Ordinarily, SOURCE_URL is
the URL of the root directory of the Subversion repository
you wish to mirror. Subversion 1.5 and newer allow you to
use svnsync for partial repository
mirroring, though — simply specify the URL of the
source repository subdirectory you wish to mirror
as SOURCE_URL.
By default, the aforementioned basic requirements of a
mirror are that it allows revision property modifications
and that it contains no version history. However, as of
Subversion 1.7, you may now optionally disable the
verification that the target repository is empty using
the --allow-non-empty option. While the
use of this option should not become habitual (as it
bypasses a valuable safeguard mechanism), it does aid in
one very common use-case: initializing a copy of a
repository as a mirror of the original. This is
especially handy when setting up new mirrors of
repositories which contain a large amount of version
history. Rather than initialize a brand new repository as
a mirror and then syncronize all of the history into it,
administrators will find it significantly
faster to first make a copy of the mature repository
(perhaps using svnadmin hotcopy) and
then use svnsync initialize
--allow-non-empty to initialize that copy as a
mirror which is now already up-to-date with the
original.
Fail to initialize a mirror repository due to inability to modify revision properties:
$ svnsync initialize file:///var/svn/repos-mirror \
http://svn.example.com/repos
svnsync: Repository has not been enabled to accept revision propchanges;
ask the administrator to create a pre-revprop-change hook
$
Initialize a repository as a mirror, having already
created a pre-revprop-change hook that
permits all revision property changes:
$ svnsync initialize file:///var/svn/repos-mirror \
http://svn.example.com/repos
Copied properties for revision 0.
$