Comments on: How To Properly Set SVN svn:externals Property In SVN Command Line

By: Lucas Souza

Lucas Souza — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 15:21:42 +0000

Thanks, very useful!

By: aaron

aaron — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 19:59:44 +0000

My svn, version 1.6.6 has the externals parameters in the reverse order.
For my system, your command would be

svn propset svn:externals 'http://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/akismet/trunk akismet'

By: Aaron Newton

Aaron Newton — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:06:34 +0000

Awesome stuff bro.

Externals seems like a good option when I'm in a non-Java environment (which is pretty often) and lack a tool like Maven – very handy.

By: Patrick Salami

Patrick Salami — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 21:04:17 +0000

Thanks for the info! This was very helpful. However, I noticed a small issue: I tried this with SVN 1.6.6 and after I issue the propset command, I tried to do the commit but it complained that the directory was out of date. I had to do svn up *before* doing svn commit in order for it to work.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 14:10:06 +0000

Thanks!!! You save my day!

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 18 May 2011 20:57:10 +0000

The format changed sometime during or before SVN version 1.6. The TortoiseSVN client had a tooltip showing that the format is now:
URL directory-name
not:
directory-name URL

By: KNRO

KNRO — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 15:12:58 +0000

Thanks! I've done this so many times before, but when I needed to do it again, I forgot!

By: Aj

Aj — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 15:50:31 +0000

Thank you! The documentation on this is pretty lame. Took a few minutes of Google searching to figure out my mistake.

By: Ricky

Ricky — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:26:23 +0000

It's worth pointing out here when using the svn client commands under the Windows environment the single quotes need to be replaced for double quotes or you will get the following svn error:

svn: Cannot specify revision for setting versioned property 'svn:externals'

By: Ismael Casimpan

Ismael Casimpan — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 03:02:15 +0000

Hi there Srikanth. You need to know scripting like bash or perl. You can do what you want via the hook scripts. In your repository hooks directory (say /var/repo/svnrepo01/hooks), you can look at pre-commit.tpl to start with.

I'm sorry I cannot spoon-feed you with everything but if you know scripting, that's all that you need to start from.

Good Luck!
Ismael Casimpan

By: Srikanth

Srikanth — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 10:03:33 +0000

Hi,

I am a SUBVERSION NEWBIE and I had a requirement in which we need to force each and every user to enter comment in a specified format like
BUG ID:
REV NO:
…like. And Clearly I am dumb about how to start. Looking for your valuable help on this.

Thank you,
Srikanth

By: Ismael Casimpan

Ismael Casimpan — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 13:47:09 +0000

That's a helpful tip, Eric. But just in case someone wants to directly use 1 command, my recent blog post would help http://www.buggedtech.com/2011/01/25/multiple-values-on-svnexternals/

By: Jean Deruelle

Jean Deruelle — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 09:40:38 +0000

Thanks for the post, worked great !

We use it for having a main docs directory (http://mobicents.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/docs/) on Mobicents (http://www.mobicents.org/) which gather the docs from multiple subprojects that the main content authoring person can checkout without checking out the full SVN

By: Eric

Eric — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 13:51:48 +0000

I use a slightly different version. It let's you edit multiple externals via your editor of choice (ie. Vi)

Assume you have an externals folder called 'ext'

cd into that directory and then you can run 'svn propedit svn:externals .'

That will allow you to edit all externals defined in that directory through your editor.

By: Timothy Nott

Timothy Nott — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 22:37:26 +0000

Thanks for the post. Saved me eons, I'm sure.

By: cheapshot

cheapshot — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 13:06:11 +0000

Thanks Russakovskii.
I had the same problem.
I was used to command line and then forced to use SmartSVN because this trouble, that is not covered on svn redbook. It's a pity that properties on svn is so documentation missed.

By: john random hacker

john random hacker — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 11:03:45 +0000

thank you very much. svn sucks. git ftw!

By: Artem Russakovskii

Artem Russakovskii — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:02:20 +0000

Glad I could help :-]

By: Kalle

Kalle — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:06:41 +0000

*love* <– this is all I wanted to say, really, for you saving my ass on an increasingly frustrated "gaah" moment of trying to propset the svn:externals deal, but I got a "comment too short" whine at me. Bah

By: GRAQ

GRAQ — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 09:44:16 +0000

Thanks Artem!

Am creating an install routine for WordPress builds, loading public and private plugins and themes. Perfect.