neverpanic.de » CoffeeBreak

Subversion Property Copy

written by Clemens Lang at Feb 16^th 2009, 0:03

Although there is a couple of Subversion GUIs for Macs, I usually use the CLI. I manage all source code I write during my studies using Subversion and usually add revision number and date of last checkin to the file using the svn:keywords-Property. However, I always forget the set of keywords I usually add: Author Date Id Revision URL. Unfortunately, there is no way to copy a property from one file to another in the standard subversion binary. There is, however, a little shortcut:

svn propset $propertyName "`svn propget $propertyName $fromFileName`" $toFileName

Typing this monster isn’t any userfriendly at all, though – a little .bashrc magic does the trick:

# add svn propcopy
function svn() {
    case "$1" in
        pc|propcopy)
            propName=$2
            fromFile=$3
            shift 3
            `which svn` propset $propName "`\`which svn\` propget $propName $fromFile`" $@
        ;;
        *)
            `which svn` $@
        ;;
    esac
}

Update: Thanks to Raim for the wildcard support. Using subversion auto-props is an option for files, but unfortunately, auto-props don’t work on directories yet.

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