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CB in Aus
Asked: 2009-07-16 18:34:41 +0800 CST

What are the soup to nuts installation requirements from WebSVN on Windows 2003?

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I am trying to set up WebSVN on a Windows 2003 Server which we'll connect w FogBugz. Pretty soon I'm installing PHP, Apache OR FastCGI OR neither, cygwin, Visual C++ runtime, etc., reconfiguring IIS, changing ini files, reading five readme's at once and rubbing chicken bones together. There's got to be a cleaner way?

windows-server-2003 svn installation

3 Answers

  1. The complexity for this installation for someone as inexperienced as myself are: 1. Trying to get the full stack (PHP, subversion, WebSVN) installed and running the first time. 2. Wading through the many how-to's on the subject, including the associated readme and install.txt info. May of these steps are inconsistent with each other and many appear to be unnecessary for the initial set up.

    I have found a quick way to get up and running from scratch. Here's an outline of the steps.

    1. Install the BitNami.org WAPP stack (http://bitnami.org/stack/wappstack). This is a one-click way of getting PHP running on a Apache 2.2 web server running Windows. You can use the PostgresSQL interface to as a test case that it is running.

    2. Install the subversion for Apache 2.2 (http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/ProjectDocumentList?folderID=8100)

    3. Follow the documentation from tigris specifically for apache2.2 on Windows to get the repository started. Don't go to step 4 until you can reach your repository from TortoiseSVN.

    4. Install WebSvn. Move the install directory into the subdirectory of the apache install within the Bitnami stack. Follow the install information inside of WebSvn with caution. Take only the obviously essential steps (like configging the paths).

    Using this approach, I was able to get the whole thing running in under an hour.

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  2. We had similar annoyances and moved to unfuddle. I think most of the SVN tools you'll find are meant to run on linux...I remember searching for a better web interface for SVN that played with Windows nicely and coming up with pretty much nothing.

    I debated just installing Linux on a VM, but realized that it didn't make sense for us to have a non-Windows server in our infrastructure (we are a Windows shop). So I decided to look for a hosted option. I liked unfuddle because it had kind of a basecamp clone interface, and also had ticket support for small projects Fogbugz didn't make sense for. There are a few other good hosted options...Springloops looks pretty nice and I think they just added the ability to search the repository, which is useful.

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  3. Linux isn't that hard to learn, especially if its on an internal network where you don't have to worry about security setup so much (and to be honest, security isn't that difficult to learn either).

    So I wouldn't discount using a linux server for this - think of the skills you could pick up and use as the economic downturn continues to bite :)

    The easiest way to continue it on Windows is to install VisualSVN Server which comes with Apache installed and set up for a simple web interface.

    To install WebSVN itself on Windows is easy to - you need to install PHP and a webserver. IIRC PHP was modified to run under IIS, so it could be just as simple as installing it and letting it configure IIS to run PHP scripts, then installing WebSVN into a directory. As its PHP it will run as easily as any other script file (or easier than ASPX!)

    From the question though, it appears you're thinking this is much harder than it actually is, or you havn't got any svn infrastructure in place. If this is the case, go with VisualSVN Server and put websvn on top of the apache it installs. If you have tried and failed to install, let us know how far you got so we can help you further.

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