This section is from the "Version Control with Subversion" book, by Ben Collins-Sussman, Brian W. Fitzpatrick and C. Michael Pilato. Also available from Amazon: Version Control with Subversion.
The first time that the svn
command-line client is executed, it creates a per-user
configuration area. On Unix-like systems, this area appears
as a directory named .subversion
in the
user's home directory. On Win32 systems, Subversion creates a
folder named Subversion
, typically inside
the Application Data
area of the user's
profile directory (which, by the way, is usually a hidden
directory). However, on this platform the exact location
differs from system to system, and is dictated by the Windows
registry.
[48]
We will refer to the per-user configuration area using its Unix
name, .subversion
.
In addition to the per-user configuration area, Subversion
also recognizes the existence of a system-wide configuration
area. This gives system administrators the ability to
establish defaults for all users on a given machine. Note
that the system-wide configuration area does not alone dictate
mandatory policy—the settings in the per-user
configuration area override those in the system-wide one, and
command-line arguments supplied to the svn
program have the final word on behavior. On Unix-like
platforms, the system-wide configuration area is
expected to be the /etc/subversion
directory; on Windows machines, it looks for a
Subversion
directory inside the common
Application Data
location (again, as
specified by the Windows Registry). Unlike the per-user
case, the svn program does not attempt
to create the system-wide configuration area.
The per-user configuration area currently contains three
files—two configuration files (config
and
servers
), and a README.txt
file which describes the INI format. At the time of their
creation, the files contain default values for each of the
supported Subversion options, mostly commented out and grouped
with textual descriptions about how the values for the key
affect Subversion's behavior. To change a certain behavior,
you need only to load the appropriate configuration file into
a text editor, and modify the desired option's value. If at
any time you wish to have the default configuration settings
restored, you can simply remove (or rename) your configuration
directory and then run some innocuous svn
command, such as svn --version. A new
configuration directory with the default contents will be
created.
The per-user configuration area also contains a cache of
authentication data. The auth
directory
holds a set of subdirectories that contain pieces of cached
information used by Subversion's various supported
authentication methods. This directory is created in such a
way that only the user herself has permission to read its
contents.
[48] The APPDATA
environment variable
points to the Application Data
area,
so you can always refer to this folder as
%APPDATA%\Subversion
.