Subversion is a full-fledged version control software obviously supporting commands like checkout, add or commit. The ant task from O�Reily didn�t even support checkout! It supported a very limited set from the available commands.
So I went for svnant task which had much better support. Also this way you don�t have to mess with exec�ing the Subversion CLI commands directly from your ant script. It is wrapped up for ease of use. It can also use JNI interface for speed.
To provide access to the Subversion API, svnant uses either the javahl - Subversion
Java bindings or Subversion�s command line programs (which must be installed and in your PATH).
javahl uses JNI which must be setup appropriately. I preferred using the Subversion�s command line programs as subversion was already installed in my system.
Steps:
1. I am assuming you already have ant installed. If not do it first. Ensure %ANT_HOME% ($ANT_HOME for *nix) is defined and %ANT_HOME%\bin is appended to your %PATH%.
2. If you do not have subversion installed then first download it and install.
2.1 Ensure that svn is in your path by invoking svn from a command windows (cmd for windows, bash etc. for *nix).
3. Download svnant and extract the files to any directory.
4. Go to your project directory. If it doesn�t have a lib (or equivalent) directory to store required jar files then create one and copy all the files (*.jar ) from svnant�s lib directory:
commons-lang-2.0.jar
jakarta-regexp-1.3.jar
svnClientAdapter.jar
svnant.jar
svnjavahl.jar
svnkit.jar
5. To use svn task you have to add a taskdef to your build file. Use either of the following:
Option 1:
<taskdef name="svn" classname="org.tigris.subversion.svnant.SvnTask"/>
This requires the lib directory to be included with either �ant -lib lib� or by adding an extra parameter:
<taskdef name="svn" classname="org.tigris.subversion.svnant.SvnTask" classpathref="project.classpath"/>
where project.classpath is previously defined as:
<path id="project.classpath">
<fileset dir="lib">
<include name="**/*.jar"/>
</fileset>
</path>
Option 2 is simpler:
<taskdef resource="svntask.properties" classpathref="project.classpath"/>
The project.classpath is previously defined as shown before.
For example you can use this simple build.xml file to fetch latest code from WordPress repository:
<project name="WordPress" default="update" basedir=".">
<path id="project.classpath">
<fileset dir="lib">
<include name="**/*.jar"/>
</fileset>
</path>
<taskdef resource="svntask.properties" classpathref="project.classpath"/>
<target name="update" description="Update WordPress from Subversion Repository" >
<svn>
<checkout url="http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/trunk/" destPath="src" />
</svn>
</target>
</project>
Run this script by simply typing ant.