At some point, you’re going to need to understand how your
Subversion client communicates with its server. Subversion’s networking
layer is abstracted, meaning that Subversion clients exhibit the same
general behaviors no matter what sort of server they are operating
against. Whether speaking the HTTP protocol (http://
) with the Apache HTTP Server or speaking
the custom Subversion protocol (svn://
) with
svnserve, the basic network model is the same. In this section, we’ll
explain the basics of that network model, including how Subversion manages
authentication and authorization matters.