Enabing Keyword Substitution with SVN in Flex Builder

Similar to CVS, Subversion supports keyword substitution (i.e., substitute keywords--pieces of useful, dynamic information about a versioned file-- into the contents of the file itself).

Subversion defines the list of keywords available for substitution. That list contains the following five keywords, some of which have aliases that you can also use:

Keyword	Aliases
Date	LastChangedDate
Revision	LastChangedRevision or Rev
Author	LastChangedBy
HeadURL	URL
Id	n/a

Simply adding keyword anchor text to your file does nothing special. Subversion will never attempt to perform textual substitutions on your file contents unless explicitly asked to do so. To tell Subversion whether or not to substitute keywords on a particular file, we again turn to the property-related subcommands. The svn:keywords property, when set on a versioned file, controls which keywords will be substituted on that file. The value is a space-delimited list of the keyword names or aliases found in the previous table.

In FlexBuilder, say, you want to add svn:keywords property to multiple files located in the same folder. Right click that folder, select Team > Set Property and fill in information like this:

Then click OK button to set it. To view the property settings on a specific file, you right click that file and select Team > Show Properties. A SVN Properties view will be displayed with name/value pairs. However, before you can view the SVN properties, you need to enable the view by selecting Window (Menu) > Other Views. A Show View dialog will pop up and you can select SVN Properties to enable it.

For example, say you have a versioned file named AbstractHeader.as with a file header like this:

/* Copyright (c) 2007, 2008, Oracle. All rights reserved.  */
/* $HeadURL$ */
/* $Id$ */

With no svn:keywords property set on that file, Subversion will do nothing special. Now, let's enable substitution of the Id and HeadURL keyword by following above-described steps. Immediately after you commit this property change, Subversion will update your working file with the new substitute text as follows:

/* Copyright (c) 2007, 2008, Oracle. All rights reserved.  */
/* $HeadURL: svn://rws65122fwks.us.oracle.com/AirGadgets/src/com/oracle/apps/search/AbstractHeader.as $ */
/* $Id: AbstractHeader.as 26 2008-12-04 00:58:26Z sguan $ */