Comments on: Adding an External SVN Resource With Tortoise SVN

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 18 May 2011 20:52:01 +0000

The format changed sometime before/during version 1.6 — this was kicking my butt from the command line because of that. Using TortoiseSVN had a tooltip that the format is now: URL directory, not directory URL

By: Olly Balmer

Olly Balmer — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 16:48:34 +0000

Another tip – the URL must be URL formatted, ie spaces replaced by %20 s etc. The local dir should be enclosed in quotes if spaces are desired. eg:

if the external directory in Mats example is in fact “Framework Shared Files”, then the externals property setting should be:

“Ext Framework Files” https://svn.example.com/Framework/trunk/Framework%20Shared%20Files

By: 2009 In Retrospect | Mats Lindh

2009 In Retrospect | Mats Lindh — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 10:03:08 +0000

[...] svn external [...]

By: SVN Externals: How to use multiple SVN’s in one using TortoiseSVN

SVN Externals: How to use multiple SVN’s in one using TortoiseSVN — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 21:22:19 +0000

[...] http://e-mats.org/2008/05/adding-an-external-svn-resource-with-tortoise/ [...]

By: Greg

Greg — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 15:18:28 +0000

Thanks Mats, I just read in the docs that you can’t pull in a directory that already exists. Pulling each file 1 by 1 … when I might end up with hundreds of files (aka – silk icons) isn’t a solution.

But I think the solution might be to first set up an empty directory, pull in the main external starter kit … and then begin adding files to the individual projects. That sound right? I have to test this shortly.

By: Mats Lindh

Mats Lindh — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:28:07 +0000

I don’t know where you’ve set the svn:externals property, but I’d suggest trying to set it on the already existing app directory, and then provide the two URLs for the files. svn propset / edit the properties for the app/ directory:

http://example.com/includeme/app/file1.php
http://example.com/includeme/app/file2.php

Try that!

By: Greg

Greg — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:49:23 +0000

Thanks for this article!

I have a question … this is working perfectly for me, unless the directory already exists. For example …

The repo i want is, let’s say, on – http://example.com/includeme/ and has a directory structure of …
app/file1.php
app/file2.php

Now my other project in which I wish to pull in this external repo has a directory called app already there. I get this error when trying to update to pull it in …

External Failed: d:\myproject\app
Error: Working copy ‘d:\myproject\app’ locked
Error: Please execute cleanup command

now, if app wasn’t already there, then no problem. trouble is, app will be there for every project, i just want to pull in file1.php and file2.php.

Thanks!

By: Mats

Mats — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:05:33 +0000

The externals setting is evaluated at checkout, as the subversion client then pulls the code from the 3rd party repository using the supplied credentials for the user (if located on the same server, this works automagically). There is nothing more stored in the original repository other than the URL of the second subversion resource. This means that the web interface is unable to show the actual data from the other repository, since it simply doesn’t live in the repository.

It would be possible for a web interface to redirect the browser to another web interface or at least show the URL to the other repository. Pulling the other repository would probably require too much updating and mumbling about, but I’m sure someone has solved that problem too. I have no suggestions of any free (or payware) repository browsers that do this currently.

By: Marco

Marco — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:53:10 +0000

We’re using external to link files for our products. The only issue that we have is, that when we link other directories (within the same or a different repository), we can’t see the content in the repo or web browser. So it appears that it only links it when we export or check out that folder. Is there a way to view the content as it is linked?
I’m wondering if that would be something in regards to the server configuration, but I didn’t set it up, would like to help our IT guy though to correct this “issue” (unless this behavior is intended).

Thanks!

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 01:10:33 +0000

Hi,
thanks for the information, worked perfect.
One thing though, include a tip that multiple externals need to be placed in separate lines. I kind of deleted my first external by adding a new one. So each SVN has ONE property externals, which in Tortoise can be used for many externals splitting them with newlines…

See here for full doc, but I liked your short version better. And you were more on the top at google :-)

http://tortoisesvn.net/docs/release/TortoiseSVN_en/tsvn-dug-import.html

Chris