Subversion for WebDAV Sync?
 

Hey,

I've been a Subversion administrator for some time and am quite comfortable setting it up. I do not however have extensive experience using Subversion's WebDAV. In theory, you can make writes to files on a WebDAV share and they each result in commits/revisions in the subversion repository.

I do know that Subversion is extremely efficient in its persistence, even with binary files, so even though it's raison d'etre is not to be a WebDAV server, I'm I think it should be able to handle persisting OmniFocus data. I'm just not sure about the performance.

Anyway, to my question - has anyone tried using a Subversion server as a WebDAV synchronization service for OmniFocus? One obvious and cool benefit would be that the Subversion server would retain excellent history, so that if anything were to go wrong, you could go back to any point in time and recover, as if from a backup.

I think Ken had his system set up this way for a while for debugging purposes. I'll ask him to chime in here if he takes a break from fixing bugs.

I've set up Subversion as a plain old DAV server for Finder and Windows Explorer.. the trick is to turn on the auto commit (I think it's called) option on the server. Essentially non-versioned clients don't know how to open a transaction, this option makes the server automatically create a transaction for each operation.

Thanks ohammersmith, it has been some time since I played with this part of svn, I'll watch for that.

[QUOTE=ohammersmith;43494]I've set up Subversion as a plain old DAV server for Finder and Windows Explorer.. the trick is to turn on the auto commit (I think it's called) option on the server. Essentially non-versioned clients don't know how to open a transaction, this option makes the server automatically create a transaction for each operation.[/QUOTE]

Hey Lizard,

That would be great - thanks for offering to bring this to Ken.

I'm thinking that I may run my own svn server or try one of the free offerings out there.


[QUOTE=Lizard;43491]I think Ken had his system set up this way for a while for debugging purposes. I'll ask him to chime in here if he takes a break from fixing bugs.[/QUOTE]

Update on my plan - after having a quick survey of what's out there for free Subversion hosting, I think I'll prefer to do it myself. I'd have to go through some hassle to determine whether the right settings are being used, and if I was providing free subversion hosting, I think I'd be inclined to prevent the server from being used in this way (autocommit).

[quote=fudster;43513]Hey Lizard,

That would be great - thanks for offering to bring this to Ken.

I'm thinking that I may run my own svn server or try one of the free offerings out there.[/quote]