
Table of Contents
Brief of SVN
Before we go into SVN Interview Questions let’s see what is svn. Subversion, or SVN, is a centralized source control system. Whereas developers in Git can work in a very decentralized manner, with an offline copy of their code, a connection is required to work with SVN repositories. Branching works a little differently, by basing new code of the so-called trunk and merging them back. The trunk is the main code repository like the master branch is in Git. While Git does not version revisions, SVN does.
Basic svn questions
- Difference between GIT and SVN repository?
- What is the difference between “svn export”, “svn checkout” ?
- What is the difference between “svn update and “svn commit” ?
- How can u resolve conflict in SVN? Interviewer may also ask you to explain one scenario how you resolved conflicts in SVN in your current project.
- What is the command to see what is inside the svn repository?
- What all things we can store in SVN repository?
- Difference between “svn import”, “svn add” and “svn commit” ?
- How can you revert to previous version in SVN?
- Best practices of SVN
- How can see the difference between the local version and repository version of files in SVN?
Svn questions command related
- How do you create a release branch?
prompt> svn copy -m ”Create 1.0 release branch” \
http://svn.mycompany.com/mbench/trunk \
http://svn.mycompany.com/mbench/branches/RB_1.0
- How do you Switch to a branch?
prompt> cd work/mbench
mbench> svn switch http://svn.mycompany.com/mbench/branches/RB_1.0
- How do you Create a release tag from a working copy?
prompt> cd work/mbench-1.0
mbench-1.0> svn update
mbench-1.0> svn copy . \
http://svn.mycompany.com/mbench/tags/REL_1.0.0 \
-m ”Create R1.0.0 tag”
- How do you Mark a file that needs locking?
mbench> svn propset svn:needs-lock yes docs/benchmarks.xlsx
mbench> svn commit -m ”Spreadsheet requires a lock before editing”
- How do you Lock a file for editing?
docs> svn update
docs> svn lock benchmarks.xlsx -m ”Adding 64-bit results”
‘benchmarks.xlsx’ locked by user ‘mike’
- How do you Convert your CVS repository to a Subversion dump file?
prompt> cd /tmp/cvs-convert
cvs-convert> cvs2svn –dumpfile=some-project.dump
–encoding=UTF8 –encoding=latin1 some-project/
- How do you Remove a property from a file?
mbench> svn propdel reviewed-by src/mbench.java
property ‘reviewed-by’ deleted from ‘src/mbench.java’.
- How do you Import third-party source code?
Extract the third-party source code to a temporary directory. Here we use /temp/NUnit-2.5.0.
temp> svn import -m ”Import NUnit 2.5.0″ NUnit-2.5.0 \
http://svn.mycompany.com/vendorsrc/nunit/current
Adding NUnit-2.5.0/NUnitTests.config
Adding NUnit-2.5.0/NUnitFitTests.html
: : :
Adding NUnit-2.5.0/install/NUnit.wxs
Adding NUnit-2.5.0/license.rtf
- How do you see which files have changed in your working copy?
mbench> svn status
- How do you revert a revision using the command-line client?
mbench> svn merge -r 14:13 .
— Reverse-merging r14 into ‘.’:
G .idea/workspace.xml
U src/mbench.java
prompt> svn commit -m ”Reverted revision 14″
FAQs: SVN Interview Questions
How do you Check out into a local working copy?
use command to Check out into a local working copy.
prompt> cd ~/work
prompt> svn checkout http://svn.mycompany.com/mbench/trunk mbench
How do you Create a base directory for the repository ?
Create a base directory for the repository, and then initialize it.
prompt> mkdir -p ~/svn/repos
prompt> svnadmin create ~/svn/repos
How do you show log entries for your working copy?
Show log entries for your working copy.
prompt> cd ~/work/myproject
prompt> svn log | less
What is the difference between SVN and GIT ?
The difference between SVN and GIT is
SVN over more preferred over Git for handling large files or regularly chaning binary files while SVN is capable of handling multiple projects in the same repository
Git does not support “commits” across multiple branches or tags. Subversion allows the creation of folders at any location in the repository layout
Gits are unchangeable while subversion enables committers to treat a tag a branch and to create multiple revisions under a tag root
More Interview Topics
Comprehensive Subversion
A secure, efficient, productive way to manage your programming examples and software projects.