THIS IS A TEST INSTANCE. ALL YOUR CHANGES WILL BE LOST!!!!
GOAL: draft for a quick start guide to set up a simple strategy that allows you to maintain a customized version of OFBiz under SVN revision control and synchronized with the standard OFBiz SVN.
Note: this strategy is a simple implementation of the Vendor Branch Pattern; for more details about Vendor Branches refer to the "Version Control with Subversion" manual.
Author: Jacopo Cappellato - This is only a draft, I'm testing this strategy right now and I'm not an SVN expert so... your feedback is really welcome!!!
Overview: The plan is to develop a customized version of OFBiz called customofbiz, but we want to stay up to date with the official OFBiz development. We will target to do the update once every month but it can be done at any point in time.
Stage 1: Get OFBiz from the official Apache SVN server (let's say r482800 - this in no way suggests that revision is good, bad or otherwise it's just a number);
Stage 2: Import it into the local SVN repository as the ofbiz project; and tag it as ofbiz r482800;
Stage 3: Use it as the base for my customofbiz project making changes as needed to do the customisation.
Stage 4: Next month get the latest OFBiz revision, let's say r483333, from the official Apache SVN and update the local ofbiz project in the local repository with it (also adding a tag to it, for example ofbiz r483333).
Stage 5: Finally do a merge between ofbiz r482800, ofbiz r483333 and my working copy (containing the up to date customofbiz project), resolve the conflicts and commit everything to the local customofbiz.
Repository structure
Here is the local repository structure to maintain:
ofbiz
ofbiz/current ---> this will contain the latest official OFBiz release
ofbiz/ofbiz-<revnumA> ---> these are the monthly tags for the official OFBiz release (e.g. ofbiz-r482800, ofbiz-r483333, etc...)
ofbiz/ofbiz-<revnumB>
...
ofbiz/ofbiz-<revnumN>
customofbiz
customofbiz/trunk ---> this is the trunk of the customofbiz project (initially it will be the same as ofbiz <revnumA>)
How to set up an SVN repository and start the svn service
- Initialization of an empty repository
svnadmin create ./svn-repos
- Edit the ./svn-repos/conf/svnserve.conf file
- Edit the ./svn-repos/conf/passwd file
- Start the service
svnserve --daemon --root ./svn-repos
Import Apache OFBiz for the first time and create the customofbiz project
- Get the revision or latest version of OFBiz you will be starting from for this sample its r482800:
svn export http://svn.ofbiz.org/svn/ofbiz/trunk ./tmpdir/ofbiz-r482800
- Import it as the ofbiz project in the repository
Tip: the .svnversion/conf file should be equal to the standard ofbiz file except for the svn:keywords properties that should be completely removed to avoid merging problems later on
svn import -m "Import OFBiz r482800" ./tmpdir/ofbiz-r482800 svn://localhost/ofbiz/current
- Make a tag for ofbiz r482800
svn copy -m "Tag r482800 vendor drop" svn://localhost/ofbiz/current svn://localhost/ofbiz/ofbiz-r482800
- Create the "ofbizcustom" project (initially it's a copy of the OFBiz r482800 tag)
svn mkdir -m "" svn://localhost/customofbiz svn copy -m "OfbizCustom is initially built over the ofbiz-r482800 tag" svn://localhost/ofbiz/ofbiz-r482800 svn://localhost/customofbiz/trunk
Working with the customofbiz project
- Checkout the trunk of customofbiz
svn co svn://localhost/customofbiz/trunk ./tmpdir/customofbiz
- Make changes to customofbiz and then commit the new revisions to the local repository etc...
How to synch customofbiz with ofbiz every month
- Every month we get a new OFBiz revision (in this example, we get revision r483333)
svn export http://svn.ofbiz.org/svn/ofbiz/trunk ./tmpdir/ofbiz-r483333
- Update the current version of "ofbiz" project in the local svn repository and automatically create a tag (r483333, see the -t argument)
question: are the svn properties that need to be applied to new files correctly retrieved from the .svnversion/conf file?
./svn_load_dirs.pl -t ofbiz-r483333 svn://localhost/ofbiz current ./tmpdir/ofbiz-r483333
answer: probably not; you have to setup a config file (as described at the bottom of this page) and pass it to the svn_load_dirs.pl script with the -p argument. - We have to synch customofbiz, that was based on the ofbiz-r482800 tag, with the new ofbiz tag ofbiz-r483333; we do this in a working copy, not directly in the repository (before doing this, make sure that your working directory is up to date "svn up" and has no local changes "svn st").
svn merge svn://localhost/ofbiz/ofbiz-r482800 svn://localhost/ofbiz/ofbiz-r483333 ./tmpdir/customofbiz
- Conflicts are possible and you will need to fix those in your local working folder, test and then commit the changes.
- It is also a good idea to tag the new customofbiz revision.
svn copy -m "OfbizCustom is initially built over the OFBiz r482800 tag" svn://localhost/customofbiz/trunk svn://localhost/customofbiz/customofbiz-r483333
- Continuing with the example, let's say that one month later, you want to export a new OFBiz release (r486422) and import it with (svn_load_dir.pl) in the ofbiz/current and as a new tag ofbiz-r486422; Use the following command to perform the merge (thanks to Kenneth Porter for the tip):
svn merge svn://localhost/ofbiz/ofbiz-r483333 svn://localhost/ofbiz/ofbiz-r486422 ./tmpdir/customofbiz
Tip: export a local svn rather than direct from the OFBiz SVN server
Taking a complete snapshot from the live SVN server every merge can be a long job and place additional load on those servers. The export process describe above can also be done from a locally held OFBiz version that you update using standard "svn up" command.
- First time round do a clean checkout to a local folder "ofbiz_clean"
svn co https://svn.ofbiz.org/svn/ofbiz/trunk ofbiz_clean
- Next export the local "ofbiz_clean" rather than the OFBiz SVN server
svn export ofbiz_clean ./tmpdir/ofbiz-r482800
- Then you follow on with the instructions above to import and merge until you come to your next update at which point you
svn up ofbiz_clean
- and then again export the local copy
svn export ofbiz_clean ./tmpdir/ofbiz-r483333