Vendor drops that contain more than a few deletes, additions, and moves complicate the process of upgrading to each successive version of the third-party data. So Subversion supplies the svn_load_dirs.pl script to assist with this process. This script automates the importing steps we mentioned in the general vendor branch management procedure to make sure mistakes are minimized. You will still be responsible for using the merge commands to merge the new versions of the third-party data into your main development branch, but svn_load_dirs.pl can help you more quickly and easily arrive at that stage.

In short, svn_load_dirs.pl is an enhancement to svn import that has several important characteristics:

svn_load_dirs.pl takes three mandatory arguments. The first argument is the URL to the base Subversion directory to work in. This argument is followed by the URL—relative to the first argument—into which the current vendor drop will be imported. Finally, the third argument is the local directory to import. Using our previous example, a typical run of svn_load_dirs.pl might look like this:

$ svn_load_dirs.pl http://svn.example.com/repos/vendor/libcomplex 
                   current                                        
                   /path/to/libcomplex-1.1
...

You can indicate that you’d like svn_load_dirs.pl to tag the new vendor drop by passing the -t command-line option and specifying a tag name. This tag is another URL relative to the first program argument:

$ svn_load_dirs.pl -t libcomplex-1.1                              
                   http://svn.example.com/repos/vendor/libcomplex 
                   current                                        
                   /path/to/libcomplex-1.1
...

When you run svn_load_dirs.pl, it examines the contents of your existing “current” vendor drop and compares them with the proposed new vendor drop. In the trivial case, no files will be in one version and not the other, and the script will perform the new import without incident. If, however, there are discrepancies in the file layouts between versions, svn_load_dirs.pl will ask you how to resolve those differences. For example, you will have the opportunity to tell the script that you know that the file math.c in version 1.0 of libcomplex was renamed to arithmetic.c in libcomplex 1.1. Any discrepancies not explained by moves are treated as regular additions and deletions.

The script also accepts a separate configuration file for setting properties on files and directories matching a regular expression that are added to the repository. This configuration file is specified to svn_load_dirs.pl using the -p command-line option. Each line of the configuration file is a whitespace-delimited set of two or four values: a Perl-style regular expression against which to match the added path, a control keyword (either break or cont), and then optionally a property name and value:

.png$              break   svn:mime-type   image/png
.jpe?g$            break   svn:mime-type   image/jpeg
.m3u$              cont    svn:mime-type   audio/x-mpegurl
.m3u$              break   svn:eol-style   LF
.*                  break   svn:eol-style   native

For each added path, the configured property changes whose regular expression matches the path are applied in order, unless the control specification is break (which means that no more property changes should be applied to that path). If the control specification is cont—an abbreviation of continue—matching will continue with the next line of the configuration file.

Any whitespace in the regular expression, property name, or property value must be surrounded by either single or double quotes. You can escape quotes that are not used for wrapping whitespace by preceding them with a backslash () character. The backslash escapes only quotes when parsing the configuration file, so do not protect any other characters beyond what is necessary for the regular expression.