Subversion

MediaWiki uses the Subversion version control system. To use it, you have to download the official command line Subversion client. You can also use alternative clients, such as the graphical TortoiseSVN for Windows.

Subversion's command-line interface is similar to Concurrent Versions System (CVS). This is a basic and partial guide of the most useful commands. For a complete guide, use the book Version Control with Subversion. If you have write access to the server, it's recommended that you read this book and learn the advanced features of Subversion.

The repository
The MediaWiki repository is hosted on mayflower, a Wikimedia server in Amsterdam, and is reachable from http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/. The project uses a more or less standard hierarchy:


 * branches
 * tags
 * trunk

Pre-production work is made in the trunk tree. Since Wikimedia servers run the code in this tree for production usage, patches made in this tree must not break the code. You should also avoid rewriting extensive portions of the trunk as well. MediaWiki itself is in the phase3 subdirectory of the trunk.

branches is used for major coding work, testing huge patches, and testing unstable patches. Some developers have their own branch of the code here. It is also used to prepare new stable releases (through the well-known beta &rarr; release candidate &rarr; security & maintenance fix cycle). Each major stable series gets its own directory as REL_. For example, MediaWiki 1.9 work is being done in REL1_9</tt>.

tags</tt> is a special hierarchy used to save the state of the software at a given point in the time. You should NEVER make any change to it as this is only useful when releasing new versions. That task is handled solely by the MediaWiki release manager (Tim Starling).

There is an additional subproject named wikimedia-web</tt>, which hosts the Wikimedia portal files located at http://www.wikimedia.org/. You usually don't want to modify anything there without referring to the Wikimedia Foundation and/or the Wikimedia system administrators.

Check out
First, you have to check out the code of MediaWiki. Use the following syntax: svn checkout http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/folders_to_download sub_folder_name

You can browse the code structure using the web interface (ViewVC). Use the three folders there for different purposes:
 * Trunk is the main development branch.
 * The branches are used for stable versions of the core and for versions of extensions that work with those stable versions; and for the development of complex features.
 * The tags are used to track the released versions.

The URL structure is:


 * transport : http://svn.wikimedia.org
 * repository : /svnroot/mediawiki
 * branch/tag : /trunk, or /branches/REL1_17, or /tags/REL1_16_2
 * files : /phase3

Unlike the old CVS, the URL is used to specify the branch or the tag.

Don't leave off the files part (eg. "phase3") or branch part (eg. "trunk")! If you leave that off you check out every revision of every file in the repo, which is insane.

To check out MediaWiki development trunk into the folder "wiki": svn checkout http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/phase3 wiki

To check out Extension:TitleKey set into the folder "TitleKey": svn checkout http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/TitleKey TitleKey

To check out all extensions set into the folder "extensions": svn checkout http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/extensions extensions

To check out the latest bits in some particular release branch: svn checkout http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/branches/REL1_16/phase3 REL1_16

To check out a specific version of the software: svn checkout http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/tags/REL1_16_2/phase3 REL1_16_2

To check out a specific development revision number ##### of the software: (for example the one used there: ) svn checkout http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/phase3@##### wiki

or svn checkout -r ##### http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/phase3 wiki

or, if you want to switch to that revision #####, use update command: svn update -r #####

Unlike the old CVS, anonymous access is completely up to date, so you can grab fixes immediately after they get committed.

Updating the working copy
To update your working copy and get the latest files, use the following command:

svn update #or just: "svn up"

Note that SVN, unlike CVS, doesn't need to be told to prune removed files or create new directories. This is automagic.

For a simple way to keep abreast of changes, one could use e.g., cp RELEASE-NOTES /tmp && svn up && diff /tmp RELEASE-NOTES

Conflict discovered in 'includes/NeurdBall.php'. Select: (p) postpone, (df) diff-full, (e) edit, (h) help for more options:
 * What happens if I change some file, then do "svn up" and it was changed upstream too?
 * Don't worry. You will see

Making a diff
Diffs, or patches, are text files which include all the changes done in the working copy. If you suggest a new feature in Bugzilla and like to suggest a change which fixes it, upload a patch.

To create a diff from the current repository, use the following command:

svn diff

Normally, unlike CVS, you don't have to tell SVN which files you changed; however, you may like to diff only a part of the repository. To do that, specify the files to diff:

svn diff includes/SpecialMyAwesomePage.php

Note that SVN defaults to the "unified" diff format, so the "-u" option doesn't have to be passed.

You can see the changes that were made since your last checkout: svn diff -rBASE:HEAD

or make a forward comparison between your working copy and the latest: svn diff -rHEAD

Applying a diff
Subversion does not contain a built in command to apply diffs to the current working copy (for example, to review or commit diffs published in Bugzilla); instead, you can use the regular patch unix utility: patch -p0 < patch_file

TortoiseSVN has a built-in support for applying a diff.

Changing file structure
You can add files or folders to the working copy, to be included in the next diff or commit, using the command: svn add file.name

If you add a folder, all the files included in the folder are added, except for files in the ignored list.

Make sure the eol-style is set on this new file (see also Subversion/auto-props). You may need to set this manually when the file has no or an unusual extension which is not listed in your auto-props setup. svn propset svn:eol-style native file.name

You can delete files or folders from the working copy, to be deleted in the next commit or marked as such in the next diff, using the command (which will automatically delete the files from the working copy, but won't delete folders in such way): svn delete file.name

Make sure the file or folder do not have local modifications, else they won't be deleted unless you force the deletion.

Reverting your changes in your local copy

 * If you are developer see section Undoing changes below. This is most likely the command you want, and not "svn revert" as explained below.

If your changes in the working copy are not useful in your opinion, you can revert them using the following command: svn revert

You must use parameters for this command. To revert all your changes in the working copy, use: svn revert -R.

To revert the changes in a specific file, use: svn revert file.name

Reverting can also remove added files (they won't be deleted, just removed and considered "unknown files", just like you didn't use  at first), and restore deleted files (both deleted by hand and deleted by  ).

Checking the status of the working copy
You can check the status of your working copy using the following command: svn status

These are several important letters in the first column of the item, which show the status:
 * M = the item was modified by you
 * A = the item was added by you (using )
 * D = the item was deleted by you (using )
 * ? = the item is not under the version control, but exists
 * ! = the item is missing (under the version control, but does not exist - probably deleted without using ) or incomplete

Developer use
You can request access at the commit access requests page. If you have a write access for the server, you can use an SSH access instead of HTTP access.

URLs
Replace the protocol  with   in all the commands (e.g. svn checkout) for a developer checkout.

For example, to check out the latest trunk as an anonymous, you use: svn checkout http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/phase3 wiki

To check it out as a developer, use: svn checkout svn+ssh://username@svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/phase3 wiki

Passphrase prompts may trigger for authentication -- if you haven't set up a SSH agent to help you with this (many operating systems do this as a standard component) you may wish to consult your system documentation.

If your SVN username does not match your local computer username, you can usually set this once in your SSH config file for the host 'svn.wikimedia.org' and will never have to worry about specifying it ever again. You can also embed your username into the URL, like 'svn+ssh://username@svn.wikimedia.org' however this tends to be inconvenient.

SSH will prompt you to verify the SSH key fingerprint for svn.wikimedia.org. The correct fingerprint is 4d:76:a4:a2:47:c1:bc:a8:d5:d7:51:ec:15:71:77:9a.

"Commit failed" ? Convert your anonymous checkout for developer's use !
If you sent an  and your system annoys you with a message like svn: Commit failed (details follow): svn: Server sent unexpected return value (403 Forbidden) in response to MKACTIVITY request for '/svnroot/mediawiki/!svn/act/cf44a626-c784-11e0-b670-c722664463a3' you have most likely tried to commit your updated local working copy based on a previous anonymous check-out via.

You are lucky: this can be healed. For example, if you accidentially checked out your  using   instead of the developer checkout cd /your/local/working/copy/directory svn switch --relocate \ http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/ \ svn+ssh://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/

Windows users
Windows users of subversion client may need to follow the instructions mentioned here to make the tool use their SSH public key (or if you are using TortoiseSVN, checkout this how-to guide).

Or it can be loaded into Pageant, and will automatically be used from there. With TortoiseSVN 1.7, make sure to use a current version of pageant (0.61+).

Auto properties
See Subversion/auto-props for how to enable automatic line-ending conversion for files you add. Every developer should use it.

Commits
Commits, or check ins, are the action of applying your changes from the working copy to the web repository. Use the following command to do that: svn commit

Using the command without the parameters will fail, unless you've configured an editor, because you have to enter a comment for the file logs. You can use one of the following forms: svn commit --message="This is the log comment for revision r1234 . It fixes bug12345 and introduces \$wgNewVariable." svn commit -m "This is the log comment for revision r1234 . It fixes bug12345 and introduces \$wgNewVariable." svn commit --file=file_with_log_comment

To cause an extension to show up under the correct version in Special:ExtensionDistributor, add your extension to the corresponding extensions branch in, for example.

Magic linking
Syntax like in a commit message or code comment automatically creates a link to the specific bug or revision, or set a follow-up indication at the specific revision it follows up. When used in a commit message specifically, this syntax also creates links between revisions (to note follow-up revisions, for example).
 * bug 12345
 * r12345
 * follow up patch to r12345

Undoing changes
If you commit a change, and it turns out to be completely broken, then you can revert it by doing something like this (undoing changes explained in detail).

svn up svn merge -r REVISION_NUM_YOU_WANT_TO_UNDO:REVISION_NUM_TO_REVERT_TO. svn status svn diff svn commit --message="Self-revert accidental breakage" includes/file-you-changed.php includes/another-file-you-changed.php

For reverting a single version, you can use the changeset notation (take note of the - sign before the revision number to apply the reverse difference) svn up svn merge -c -REVISION_YOU_WANT_TO_UNDO. svn status svn diff svn commit --message="Self-revert accidental breakage" includes/file-you-changed.php includes/another-file-you-changed.php

Using the GitHub mirror
There's a mirror of the MediaWiki SVN repository at GitHub. To use it:

First clone the repository:

git svn clone git://github.com/mediawiki/mediawiki-svn.git

This will take a while. The repository is around 1.15 GiB (as of November 5, 2011).

Commiting back from this mirror is currently unsupported. See this thread on the Git mailing list for why. The gist of it is that it's hard to reconstruct the SVN metadata needed to push back to the original SVN.

What you can do instead is this:

Check out a limited part of the repository instead of the whole thing, right now there are trunk/phase3 and trunk/extensions mirrors:

git clone git://github.com/mediawiki/mediawiki-trunk-phase3.git

or:

git clone git://github.com/mediawiki/mediawiki-trunk-extensions.git

Hack there on your own branch and keep syncing with upstream. Then when you're ready to push back create your own mirror (or ask avar for an up to date copy):

git svn clone svn+ssh://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/phase3

Then just move your commits between the two repositories. E.g. with  in the original followed by   in the other.

Converting a CVS checkout to SVN
Assuming you don't want to keep any local changes to files in the repository, it's easy to just overwrite everything with a fresh checkout. This will keep your local files, such as LocalSettings.php and custom skins.

svn co http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/phase3 temp-checkout rsync -a temp-checkout/ /path/to/phase3/

The following works if you didn't delete any directories:

svn revert -R /path/to/phase3

And if you want to get rid of the old CVS dirs:

find. -type d -name CVS -print0 | xargs -0r rm -rf

Be careful with that one. ;)

If you don't have SVN or can't use it
At http://toolserver.org/~vvv/mw-nightly/ you can find snapshots of trunk and extensions, updated daily.