Subversion Repository URLs
Throughout this book, Subversion uses URLs to identify versioned files and directories in Subversion repositories. For the most part, these URLs use the standard syntax, allowing for server names and port numbers to be specified as part of the URL:
$ svn checkout http://svn.example.com:9834/repos ...
But there are some nuances in Subversion’s handling of URLs that
are notable. For example, URLs containing the file:// access method (used for local repositories) must, in accordance with
convention, have either a server name of localhost or no server name at all:
$ svn checkout file:///var/svn/repos ... $ svn checkout file://localhost/var/svn/repos ...
Also, users of the file://
scheme on Windows platforms will need to use an unofficially
“standard” syntax for accessing repositories that are on
the same machine, but on a different drive than the client’s current
working drive. Either of the two following URL path syntaxes will work,
where X is the drive on which the
repository resides:
C:> svn checkout file:///X:/var/svn/repos ... C:> svn checkout "file:///X|/var/svn/repos" ...
In the second syntax, you need to quote the URL so that the vertical bar character is not interpreted as a pipe. Also, note that a URL uses forward slashes even though the native (non-URL) form of a path on Windows uses backslashes.
Note
You cannot use Subversion’s file:// URLs in a regular web browser the
way typical file:// URLs can. When
you attempt to view a file:// URL
in a regular web browser, it reads and displays the contents of the
file at that location by examining the filesystem directly. However,
Subversion’s resources exist in a virtual filesystem (see Repository Layer), and your browser will not
understand how to interact with that filesystem.
Finally, it should be noted that the Subversion client will automatically encode URLs as necessary, just like a web browser does. For example, if a URL contains a space or upper-ASCII character as in the following:
$ svn checkout "http://host/path with space/project/españa"
then Subversion will escape the unsafe characters and behave as though you had typed:
$ svn checkout http://host/path%20with%20space/project/espa%C3%B1a
If the URL contains spaces, be sure to place it within quotation marks so that your shell treats the whole thing as a single argument to the svn program.