5.1. Repository Basics

Before jumping into the broader topic of repository administration, let's further define what a repository is. How does it look? How does it feel? Does it take its tea hot or iced, or sweetened and with lemon? As an administrator, you'll be expected to understand the composition of a repository both from a logical perspective—dealing with how data is represented inside the repository—and from a physical nuts-and-bolts perspective—how a repository looks and acts with respect to non-Subversion tools. The following section covers some of these basic concepts at a very high level.

5.1.1. Understanding Transactions and Revisions

Conceptually speaking, a Subversion repository is a sequence of directory trees. Each tree is a snapshot of how the files and directories versioned in your repository looked at some point in time. These snapshots are created as a result of client operations, and are called revisions.