svn wordpress = how?

somefool: I replied to this in the other thread.

You’re looking for the SVN Book

Oh yeah, that link is also mentioned on the WP SVN page you linked to in your post.

I replied on that too, I thought a new thread might be best though as its a slightly different subject.

heres my post from there if youd like to move it to here

I did look, but its all VERY overwhelming and surely unnecessary if you just want to use it to upgrade? Its a bit like handing someone who want to know how to print, instructions on disassembling and rebuilding a computer from scratch.

SVN seems to be bandied about like everyone should know what it is/does, might I suggest a more descriptive walkthrough on the svn page?

What do you want to do with it? update the files you have locally?

Update the files on my server (not local, regular web server) as matt shows is apparently easy to do.

I have 4 installs of WP in my server and some other installs on other peoples servers, this easy upgrading would be a boon.

A walkthrough would be counterproductive.

The forums were awash with people trying to use nightlies in the run up to 1.2. People installed it then came here screaming and yelling about the fact the code was not perfect, despite the fact that nightlies are not guaranteed stable code. Because people were praising 1.2, more people got nightlies, more people complained…

I was one of those that said we needed to make access to nightlies and svn code much much harder. Matt did make some changes including the testers mailing list and the forum benefited from that – there was a LOT less clutter from people trying the ‘bleeding edge’ code.

1.5.1.1 is now out, and there are discussions about where and how WP should move on. Undoubtedly there will be core code changes that will affect much of how WP works, and this code will be freely available through svn. A guide to using svn to get and use the latest code would just mean that people would download, install then come here screaming and yelling that the very latest code broke their blog. And if they did, they would get no help because no-one else would be foolish enough to run svn code at that stage on a production blog, but that would not be good enough for them and they’d have a tantrum. It’s happened here before.
So I favour svn remaining hidden as much as possible.

That said, if you have a specific need, I would suggest #wordpress for advice.

You could alternatively do a

svn checkout https://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/trunk ./

from within your wordpress/ directory on your web server.

Advice to other readers tempted to use svn this way:

If you don’t know both what you are doing and how to fix it should you get it wrong, please do not do it.

“The forums were awash with people trying to use nightlies in the run up to 1.2. People installed it then came here screaming and yelling about the fact the code was not perfect, despite the fact that nightlies are not guaranteed stable code. Because people were praising 1.2, more people got nightlies, more people complained…”

Thats fine and I agree wholeheartedly, but if these terms are bandied about there should be a suitable description in the codex or on the download/svn page.

“You could alternatively do a
svn checkout https://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/trunk ./
from within your wordpress/ directory on your web server.”

Im assuming you mean from in a terminal?

“there should be a suitable description in the codex or on the download/svn page”

I agree – sort of ??
If the download page had big red warnings in 72pt text, with siren wavs blaring and a button that said “By downloading this you promise to not blame anyone but yourself when your blog goes BANG!” then some people would still download, install then yell blue murder.

well im still lost, Ive installed subversion, and in terminal “svn checkout https://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/trunk ./” just returns “svn: Command not found.”

Yet the GUI app for svn seems fine, but I dont know how to do ‘diff’ing. Maybe I should just give up, it seems hellacomplicated, Im just envious.

“By downloading this you promise to not blame anyone but yourself when your blog goes BANG!”

Its not so much that imo, as just an explanation of what svn is, what it does, how it works etc etc.

Btw, the search in wordpress support atm is awful, it should (again imo) either just search in the support forums or have an option to include/exclude the codex etc as its VERY confusing.

“SVN seems to be bandied about like everyone should know what it is/does, might I suggest a more descriptive walkthrough”
It isn’t bandied around. It’s predominently a developers tool. Unless you’re fully aware of what SVN is and what it does, then you shouldn’t be attempting it.

The SVN book is the ultimate resource. SVN is more than an update tool and not attempting to understand it will only lead to heartache.

[Edited as it wasn’t as constructive as I would have liked. My apologies]

I saw it on Matts site and a few other sites, its not too much surely to expect something explaining it on the codex.

Its like when I suggested I adding my plugin to the plugins database and was told ‘use svn’. Err duh, I need a little more explanation please.

Maybe ‘bandied’ was a slightly inflammatory word, but I think the search had just irritated me. I had done a good few googles and searches before foisting my spleen upon the forums, honest.

I understand that upgrading is just something that can be done with svn and isnt the be all and end all, but if thats all I want to do then surely theres gotta be a means to explaining it in plain(ish) english without sending me to instruction manuals?

…btw, I dont want to sound ungrateful, if its REALLY not worth the hassle then I wont bother, I was just trying to add more feathers to my WP bow.

My apologies. In retrospect, what I wrote sounds harsher than I would have liked. I should have instead explained what was involved rather than bite. Call it a bad day, I’m not usually like this:-)

To make amends, I’ll attempt to give an overview of what SVN is:

SVN is a what is known as a version control or source control management (SCM) tool. It’s a way to maintain and track changes in source code. The concept is simillar to a library in that you have to check code in and out. You check in changes to what is stored in the code base (the repository) and the SCM maintains a log of these changes.

This means you can, for example, see what has changed, get the latest version of the code or even a specific version, and always have something to go back to if something goes wrong.

The first thing you need to do when using SVN is a checkout.When you do a SVN checkout, it gets out the latest version of the code.

Now that you have a fresh checkout, you can do a SVN update.

When you do a SVN update, what it does is updates the code that you have checked out to what is in the repository. If the code in the repository has changed, you get the latest version.

There’s a lot more to it but I hope that gives you a head start in understanding SVN.