what is the use of svn properties

Question

I have read that using "svn propset", you can set properties for files and directories. What kind of metadata can be attached to these properties? Has anyone used them? If so, please provide me with some examples.

Regards vadiraj

Answer 1

Some people like to set the svn:keywords property to get keyword substitution in their source files. This:

$ svn propset svn:keywords 'HeadURL Id'

for example, will replace $HeadURL$ in your source files with things like:

$HeadURL: http://svn.collab.net/repos/trunk/README $

and $Id$ with:

$Id: calc.c 148 2006-07-28 21:30:43Z sally $

Some people like these, some not.

There's also the svn:mime-type property as discussed over here. This one can be quite useful for marking binary files that should not have their end-of-line markers adjusted to match the local convention.

Answer 2

One that I use a lot is svn:executable, which sets the "+x" permission on files on those OSs where such a thing exists:

svn propset svn:executable yes thefile.exe