Version Control with Subversion - Repository Maintenance

The svnadmin program is the repository administrator's best friend. Besides providing the ability to create Subversion repositories, this program allows you to perform several maintenance operations on those repositories. The syntax of svnadmin is similar to that of svnlook :

We've already mentioned svnadmin 's create subcommand (see the section called “Repository Creation and Configuration”). Most of the others we will cover in more detail later in this chapter. For now, let's just take a quick glance at what each of the available subcommands offers.

create: Create a new Subversion repository.
deltify: Run over a specified revision range, performing predecessor deltification on the paths changed in those revisions. If no revisions are specified, this command will simply deltify the HEAD revision.
dump: Dump the contents of the repository, bounded by a given set of revisions, using a portable dump format.
hotcopy: Make a hot copy of a repository. You can run this command at any time and make a safe copy of the repository, regardless if other processes are using the repository.
list-dblogs: (Berkeley DB repositories only.) List the paths of Berkeley DB log files associated with the repository. This list includes all log files—those still in use by Subversion, as well as those no longer in use.
list-unused-dblogs: (Berkeley DB repositories only.) List the paths of Berkeley DB log files associated with, but no longer used by, the repository. You may safely remove these log files from the repository layout, possibly archiving them for use in the event that you ever need to perform a catastrophic recovery of the repository.
load: Load a set of revisions into a repository from a stream of data that uses the same portable dump format generated by the dump subcommand.
lslocks: List and describe any locks that exist in the repository.
lstxns: List the names of uncommitted Subversion transactions that currently exist in the repository.
recover: Perform recovery steps on a repository that is in need of such, generally after a fatal error has occurred that prevented a process from cleanly shutting down its communication with the repository.
rmlocks: Unconditionally remove locks from listed paths.
rmtxns: Cleanly remove Subversion transactions from the repository (conveniently fed by output from the lstxns subcommand).
setlog: Replace the current value of the svn:log (commit log message) property on a given revision in the repository with a new value.
verify: Verify the contents of the repository. This includes, among other things, checksum comparisons of the versioned data stored in the repository.