Subversion Configuration Item

It is not clear a priori how to map the configuration item concept in subversion:

In the repository

The subversion book states that "Subversion uses URLs to identify versioned files and directories in Subversion repositories". That is, roughly, Configuration Item families in subversion are identified by the URLs, where a URL can denote either a directory or a file.

But this denotation is ambiguous and inconsistent: it actually implies mostly a directory rather than a file, though this is never put straight so.

svn commands seem to have a unified syntax at the first sight, but then it turns out that the meaning of the URL depends really on each particular command case (and is not specifically explained there).

For example, one of the biggest restrictions in subversion is that one is only able to checkout directories, but not single files.

In the working copy

However, one may also consider that a CI should map to an item in a user space, itself structured as a software configuration. In this view, one may consider that the user space is the working copy, not the repository. It is where the user will actually work and perform her builds. In the working copies, the selection of versions has already happened (at checkout), and the configuration items are indeed identified as file objects, via their paths.

There remains the (confusing) mismatch between the grain of the working copy and this of the repository.

-- TatyanaShpichko? - 13 Sep 2007