svndumpreplaceprop is a command line tool used to alter properties (like
author, ou externals) directly on a svn dump. The main advantage over similar
tools is that it receives the svn dump through stdin and outputs the altered
dump to stdout. This makes it pipeable, so you can use it directly in a
svnadmin dump/load workflow.
I had a legacy svn repository I needed to move to a different server. The repository was to move to a new domain too, so a need arose of correcting all the hard-coded svn:externals properties. Also, while the old server was relying on a htpasswd auth list with non-standard, legacy usernames, the new one was to use LDAP-provided credentials, which were normalized to new company standards.
It became impractical using svnadmin to dump the 30GB repository to a file and changing all properties that needed fixing.
You can have svndumpreplaceprop transform the output of svnadmin dump
directly or using a dump file; same goes to loading your changes: either you
pipe it to a file, or directly to svnadmin load. The prop-map is a
csv-formatted file with the property you want to change, the string (regexp) to
search for, and a replacement. A sample prop-map file could be:
"svn:author","foo","bar"
"svn:author","baz","qux"
"svn:externals","test.example.com:8080","example.com"
svnadmin dump <repository_path> | ./svndumpreplaceprop.py --prop-map map.csv | svnadmin load <new_repository_path>
svnadmin dump <repository_path> | ./svndumpreplaceprop.py --prop-map map.csv | ssh [email protected] svnadmin load <new_repository_path>
This code is mostly based on Martin Blais's excelent svndumpfilter3. I couldn't find a python module that abstracted the intricacies of svn dump nodes (namely, reading and writing nodes, as well as rewriting lengths), so I kept the Lump abstraction logic I needed and stripped the filter's functionality.