Subversion at Glasgow

Subversion repositories are used to store code centrally so that it can be used and updated by different people. To access the Glasgow repositories (note that there are separate CERN repositories) you will first need to have obtained a Grid Certificate, then you can follow the instructions on this page. Be sure to set the permissions on the usercert and userkey files - instructions on how to do this can be found here (step 4), along with further help on extracting the public and private keys from your certificate.

Note that you must use the code which you entered into your browser when you exported the certificate to extract the keys. This is not the same thing as the PEM pass phrase, which you will need to set for your userkey.pem file - this is used every time you use subversion (unless you use a proxy certificate, for which see here). You can test whether you can use Subversion by typing (for example)

svn list https://ppesvn.physics.gla.ac.uk/svn/test

at the terminal, and entering your password if prompted.

After PPEIT have given you access to the repositories, you will want to familiarise yourself with how Subversion operates. Firstly note that there are several different repositories - of most interest are the ATLAS, user and test ones. The last of these is the one you should work in while you are learning how the software works - it is not advisable to attempt to use the ATLAS repository (aside from reading) until you are comfortable with Subversion, since incorrect commands (e.g. to update code) can cause serious problems. You should also note that the test repository is not safe for permanent storage, as its contents will be periodically deleted.

You can browse repositories either as normal html pages (see here) or in Trac, which is a menu-based browsing environment. For your convenience you should configure Firefox to present your Grid certificate automatically whenever it is requested (otherwise you will have to do it manually each time). To do this, go to Edit --> Preferences --> Advanced and choose "Select one automatically" under "Certificates".

Once you are ready to begin uploading code, you should start by creating a personal folder in the user repository (see here).

-- GavinKirby - 23 Jun 2009