Checkout from SVN to remote location with Eclipse

Question

I am in the need to set up eclipse in a way that I can connect to a SVN and checkout projects or files to a remote location. The remote location is Linux-based, the clients work with windows.

I read a few threads and it seems that it works on console with ssh+svn. But I am struggling badly to make this scenario run in eclipse.

Any hints? I appreciate your help.

Philipp

Answer 1

Your question sounds to me that you try to solve something, that we don't know yet. So I speculate here a little bit, and I will change my answer if the question gives indication that I was wrong.

• (Part of your) development has to live on the server, so there are resources you have to use during development, which are necessary for development.
• Possibly these resources are (only) necessary for testing (unit tests?), or for functional tests.
• You have experience with Eclipse and want to use that.

So here are sketches of possible solutions that may work for you.

Using Eclipse on the server

• You install an appropriate eclipse distro on the linux machine you have to develop on.
• You install locally e.g. Cygwin with the XWin packages that allow you to start an X-windows server locally.
• You open up an xterm locally (just to get the display variable correct).
• You start from that xterm the eclipse installed on the Linux machine: ssh <user-id>@<ip-of-linux-server> <path to eclipse> -display $DISPLAY

Pros and cons

• + You work on the machine and have the display locally.
• + You are able to checkout directly on the machine, no need of a local copy.
• - Your are not able to work without the connection to the Linux machine.

Using Eclipse locally

There are two variants, and both are valuable:

• Have the sources on the server (only)
• Have the sources locally

Sources on server, Eclipse locally

The easiest way is to mount the file system of the server, so you have access to them locally through a different drive letter. Ask your system administrator how that could be accomplished.

Pros and cons

• + Everything works as normal.
• + You don't have to install Subversion on the server.
• - Latency for the remote file system may be annoying.
• - You are only able to work with network connection to the server.

Sources locally, Eclipse locally

That is the normal way to do it. Install Eclipse with Subversion plugin as usual, checkout from the repository, work locally (even disconnected), commit your changes.

You are then able to test by doing a checkout on the server, build the system there, and do your unit and integration tests there.

Pros and cons

• + Easier to install and maintain.
• - No tests during development without a build process in between.
• - Tests can only be done with commited code, not with changes that are not commited.

My recommendation

I like the solution best with Eclipse on the server, so you use everything that is available on the server, and Eclipse under Linux is totally the same as under Windows. You don't have any steps in between for doing tests, everything is done locally (on the server).

See as well the following questions (and answers):

• Is it possible to work on remote files in Eclipse?

PS: What I forgot: I think svn+ssh is just a different protocol of Subversion to do the checkout, update and commit. It is in no way different to using the protocols file://, svn://, http:// or even https://.