In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Apache Subversion on your Debian 9. For those of you who didn’t know, For those of you who didn’t know, Apache Subversion is an open-source version control system. It helps you keep track of a collection of files and folders. Any time you change, add or delete a file or folder that you manage with Subversion, you commit these changes to your Subversion repository, which creates a new revision in your repository reflecting these changes. You can always go back, look at, and get the contents of previous revisions. SVN supports several protocols for network access: SVN, SVN+SSH, HTTP, HTTPS. If you are behind a firewall, HTTP-based Subversion is advantageous since SVN traffic will go through the firewall without any additional firewall ruleset.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of Apache Subversion (SVN) on a Debian 9 (Stretch) server.
Install Apache Subversion on Debian 9 Stretch
Step 1. Before we install any software, it’s important to make sure your system is up to date by running the following apt-get commands in the terminal:
apt-get update apt-get upgrade
Step 2. Installing Apache webserver.
First, you need to install an Apache webserver to access svn server using HTTP URLs:
apt-get install apache2 apache2-utils
Step 3. Installing Subversion.
You can issue the following command to install the Apache subversion.
apt-get install subversion subversion-tools libapache2-mod-svn a2enmod dav a2enmod dav_svn
Step 4. Configure Apache for Subversion.
Subversion Apache module package creates a configuration file /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/dav_svn.conf. You just need to make necessary changes to it:
nano /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/dav_svn.conf
Place the following content:
Alias /svn /var/lib/svn <Location /svn> DAV svn SVNParentPath /var/lib/svn AuthType Basic AuthName "Subversion Repository" AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/dav_svn.passwd </Location>
After making the above changes, restart the Apache service:
systemctl restart apache2
Step 5. Create First SVN Repository.
Create your first svn repository named myrepo, You can use any suitable name:
mkdir -p /var/lib/svn/ svnadmin create /var/lib/svn/myrepo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/lib/svn chmod -R 775 /var/lib/sv
Step 6. Create account and password for SVN.
The following commands will add two users for svn. It will prompt for users’ passwords to be assigned.
htpasswd -m /etc/apache2/dav_svn.passwd chedelics htpasswd -m /etc/apache2/dav_svn.passwd idroot
Let’s restart the Apache service again:
systemctl restart apache2
Step 7. Accessing Repository in Browser.
Subversion will be available on HTTP port 80 by default. Open your favorite browser and navigate to http://your-domain.com/svn/myrepo/ or http://your-server-ip/svn/myrepo/ and will prompt for authentication. Use login credentials created in Step 6. If you are using a firewall, please open port 80 to enable access to the control panel.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Apache Subversion. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the latest version of Apache Subversion (SVN) on the Debian 9 Stretch server. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Apache Subversion website.