A Subversion repository is a central place to store files and directories that are under revision control, as well as additional data such as a complete history of changes or information about who made those changes and when. A typical Subversion repository stores multiple projects in separate subdirectories. When publicly accessible, it allows several developers to create a working copy of any of the subdirectories, make changes, and share these changes with others by committing them back to the repository.

To create a new, empty Subversion repository in a directory of your choice, run the following command:

svnadmin create path

Note that path is an absolute or relative path to the directory in which you want to store the repository (for example, /var/svn/). If the directory does not exist, svnadmin create creates it for you.

~]$ svnadmin create svn

To put an existing project under revision control, run the following command:

svn import local_path svn_repository/remote_path [-m "commit message"]

Note that local_path is an absolute or relative path to the directory in which you keep the project (use . for the current working directory), svn_repository is a URL of the Subversion repository, and remote_path is the target directory in the Subversion repository (for example, project/trunk).

~]$ ls myproject
AUTHORS  doc  INSTALL  LICENSE  Makefile  README  src  TODO

~]$ svn import myproject file:///home/john/svn/project/trunk -m "Initial import."
Adding         project/AUTHORS
Adding         project/doc
Adding         project/doc/index.html
Adding         project/INSTALL
Adding         project/src
...