OK, I admit that I must have screwed up when I started using EGit. I started using Eclipse Galileo as a welcome alternative to Notepad edit and command-line compilation. Somewhat later I discovered that Git was integrated into Eclipse, and happily started using it.
I do not remember all the details, but it seems that I made an initial mistake that has been carried on from one computer to another and one Eclipse upgrade to another.
I have consistently tried to specify that source files are in project subdirectory src and their products are in project subdirectory bin. Git wants to archive anything in bin, as well as project metadata at the same directory level.
In the past I have been so mono-focused on the project that I just sprinkled gitignore files everywhere and clicked on "Ignore" when preparing a commit. But now that the project has been brought to a dead halt due to problems in Eclipse Kepler I have resolved to try to disentangle the mess while upgrading to Eclipse Luna.
As I see it, there are three alternatives: (1) Figure out a way to separate the various directories, (2) Brute force copy-and-paste the 300 some-odd source files into a new, clean directory structure (complicated by the fact that there are currently four open Git branches and several uncommitted changes) or (3) copy the current mess and continue to deal with extraneous "changed" files.
Alternative number one is of course the most desired.
Any suggestions?
(Later)
Please be patient with me. I am a newby in this venue. But quite experienced in other venues, where I learned to search for similar questions before posting.
I did try to search for similar problems, to no avail. I also noticed that, while composing my question, there appeared a list of other questions that might be related. None seemed applicable, so I ignored it. When I came back to see if there were any answers, there was the list again and this time I found Eclipse + EGit: clone project into workspace. Perhaps it was there at the top of the list when I finished composing. I'll know to look next time.
I tried the first recommendation, cloning via EGit from the current location to a new one. It seemed to work okay, but there are a couple of things missing: Only the specified branch is available (not MASTER) and the extensive history for the last three years is reduced to one entry dated at the time of cloning.
Fortunately, the other three branches (including MASTER) are not currently divergent. If necessary, I can manually create them again - if there is some way to recover or display the complete history in the clone.
I was not surprised to see that the several unstaged changes in the source were not present. I can deal with those manually, but I wonder if it would help if I staged them before my next attempt to clone?
(Staging those changes may or may not be possible. I became very frustrated with problems using Eclipse Kepler and gave up trying to do anything more to resolve the problems several months ago. I did not document the problems, and by now have forgotten what they were. I have a vague memory of trying to commit current changes and running into fatal errors.)
Now I think I have a more focused question - or rather several questions:
(1) When upgrading Eclipse to a new version, is EGit cloning the easiest way to continue an existing project on the same disk? Should I just copy the original directory? Should I first clone to GitHub and then clone back to the disk from there?
(2) Should I attempt to stage the uncommitted changes before cloning?
(3) Why is Git history reduced to one entry? Would it help if I let MASTER be the default branch and then what? Check out the current (rather lengthy) branch? Or something else?
(4) What should I do about .project, .settings and other configuration files? Is it okay to copy them into the new directory structure in the desired places? Or should I make note of all settings and reconstruct them in Eclipse Luna?
Every time a try to use github I get tangled in a series of errors that seem to have no solution and I give up. This time I thought I'd try to get help.
I have a local repository created and managed with Xcode. All the local git functions in Xcode work with no problem. Now I want to put this project on github so others can see it. I logged into github and created a repository. It's this one:
lummis/CS193P-2015-Assignment-5
I added a .gitignore file but then deleted it again because I thought it was causing an error. I tried adding a readme file but wasn't able to. I got some error that didn't make sense to me so I gave up on that. So at this point the github repository is empty so far as I can tell.
My local repository has many commits and is currently up-to-date. IOW there is nothing to commit. But when I do "Source Code / Push" I get the following error:
Working copy out of date. Try pulling from the remote to get the
latest changes then push again.
So I try to do that in Xcode by doing "Source Control / Pull". But then I get this error:
"github/master" is not a valid remote branch to pull from. Please
choose a different remote branch.
But there is only one branch. There is no other branch (local or remote) to choose. So I'm stuck in a Xcode-github error loop again. I searched for information about this but didn't find anything relevant. I have the Pro Git book and read and understood it at least thru chapter 2. But that doesn't help on interacting with Xcode.
Can anybody say what I need to do? I thought of deleting the remote repository and starting over but apparently there's no way to do that either!
I know lots of people use github so it must work once you know how to use it but it's a big source of frustration for me.
You have a local repository with "many commits". Let's imagine that we have three:
A---B---C
^
master
Your remote repository on GitHub also contains commits, but they are different ones from what you have locally, e.g.
Y---Z
^
master
At least one of these remote commits was created through the GitHub web interface, which creates a new commit each time you use it.
Because the two repositories contain no common history, Git can't figure out how to handle a push from your local repository to the remote one. It will refuse to accept such a push rather than making any remote commits inaccessible, which is what you usually want.
In this case, commits Y and Z in the remote repository can be discarded. They simply add and then remove a .gitignore file, and you want the remote to reflect what you have locally. The solution is to force push.
Force pushing should generally be avoided, since it can cause commits to be discarded (like Y and Z will be in this case) or to have their hashes changed, which causes major problems with shared repositories. In this instance I don't see any danger in force pushing, which can be accomplished with the -f or --force argument to git push.
(There's nothing fundamentally wrong with force pushing, and in some situations it makes perfect sense, but it should be done with care for the reasons listed above.)
I've just started using subversion, and have read the official documentation (svn book), cheat sheet and a couple of guides. I know how to install subversion (in linux), create a repository (svnadmin create), and import my Eclipse project into the repository (SVN import), view the repository files (using svn list).
But I am unable to understand some of the other terminologies. For example, after importing my Eclipse project into the newly created repository I have made changes to my Eclipse project (more than 1 file). Now, how should I update the repository with this added files/changes made to my Eclipse project?
The svn update command brings the changes from the repository into your working copy - which is the opposite of what I want i.e. bring the changes I made in my Eclipse project into the previously imported project in repository. If I am correct, you update the repository more often (as you keep extending your project implementation) than your current project (with update).
Also, I do not understand when would you use svn merge. The svn book states it applies the differences between 2 sources to a working copy. Is there a scenario which would explain this?
Finally, can I have more than 1 project checked into the repository? Or is it better to create a new repository for each project?
The term you are looking for is "commit".
Subversion does not exclusively lock a file for editing (though there is a command to do this if you really, really want to). So it is possible that you will need to merge two different users' sets of edits on a file, or even edits from two different working copies in two different locations on your machine.
Multiple projects is fine. Best approach IMHO is repository/project/trunk etc rather than repository/trunk/project.
Three things about SVN you should know:
Trunk - The main version of your code
Tags - 'Tagged' Versions of your code (i.e. v1.2.5-release)
Branches - Forks of the code for divergent development paths. We typically fork new branches to work on different versions, so if the current version is 1.2.4, you'd branch for 1.3's development. So if emergency changes to 1.2 need to be made (i.e. 1.2.5) you can work on it without worrying about what you broke by refactoring / feature adding in your 1.3 branch. The merge operation is designed so you can merge 1.3's branch back into trunk when you're ready to release 1.3, or a similar operation. You can also merge individual files (if two or more developers edited the same file at the same time and now you need to 'merge' the changes into the same file.
Each project in your repository should have 3 folders in it:
/trunk
/branches
/tags
These house the three points above. You don't have to have these folders, but you should. Other more mature VCS like Mericual/Git have the concepts of tags and branches baked into the system. In SVN these are more of a convention/reccomendation.
Terminology
Working Copy - The copy on your hard-drive, that contains all your edits, etc...
Add - Registers a file for tracking in version control
Update - Updates the working copy with changes from the server repository
Commit - Updates the server repository with changes from the working copy
Switch - Replaces the working copy with another folder within the server repository
Diff - Does a differential analysis of two files / versions of a file to see the changes between them.
Merge - Attempts to apply the changes from one or more files into another, highlighting conflicts.
Patch - A set of differences that can be used to update a file.
You commit changes to the repository
Merge is useful when you need to maintain two branches of a repository. For examples v1.x with most recent security fixes and the alpha version 2. That allows you to make the fixes in the 1.x code, whith the resulting binary for existing customers, and you can merge the changes into version 2 so fixing the bugs that weren't already caught.
I suggest you look around for 'typical svn workflows'. They will give you the big picture of the 'most common tasks'.
What you want to do is 'commit' the changes made to your files to the repository.
You need to merge in case of a conflict (when 2 or more people are working on a project and commit to the same repo. conflicts might arise).
Check the available articles on SVN kai remember to read about the sample/typical workflows or working scenarios with SVN.
Fully agree with David, but as far as question 3 is concerned, personally, I would distinguish between use cases:
Production: One project per repository. And do get warm with the mentioned tag/trunk/branch concept, it really helps a lot
Testing: I have one single repository where I have put virtually all my experimental codes (approx. 10 languages with x codes per language). Reason is: One experimental code takes me 1-2 minutes, creating a repository on a remote host, using ssh-security sometimes takes longer ;-)
Cheers
EL
Specifically:
Why do I need to explicitly enable "Enable baseless merges" all the time? I am integrating from my branch to the trunk.
What does "Enable integrate over
deleted targets" mean? Shouldn't it
do this by default? If the file
doesn't exist, and you integrate to
that branch with the file, it should
create the file, right??
What does "Do not get latest revision
of selected files" have to do with
integrating? I should be choosing a
source revision, and a target (to
create a new target revision).
What does "Disregard indirect
integration history" mean? I've never used it, since it sounds scary.
I would be grateful to know, as I am a little unsure of what options to enable when I am trying to do various integration tasks from our trunk to various branches or vice versa. (I am not the buildmaster, but hey, I want to know what he knows).
Why do I need to explicitly enable
"Enable baseless merges" all the time?
I am integrating from my branch to the
trunk.
Can't help you here. Something is not right.
What does "Enable integrate over
deleted targets" mean?
If the target file has been deleted and the source file has changed, will re-branch the source file on top of the target file. Without this option, a file on the branch, that has been changed on the branch and deleted on the trunk, would not be allowed to be integrated back into the trunk.
Shouldn't it do this by default?
Not if you are integrating a file back into the trunk, which you branched from the trunk, then deleted on the trunk. Normally 'p4 integrate' avoids mixing outstanding edits with a deleted file. You have to use the advanced options to tell it how to deal with a deleted file.
If the file doesn't exist, and you
integrate to that branch with the
file, it should create the file,
right?
When integrating a file, that previously never existed (i.e., it was added to the branch), from one location to another, yes, Perforce will simply create it in the location into which you are integrating. However, if the file originally came from the trunk, was deleted on the trunk, and now you're trying to integrate it back into the trunk from the branch, you have to tell it what to do via these integration options. Here's the command line switches to which these options correspond:
Enable integrations around deleted revisions = -d
Integrate over deleted targets = -Dt
Delete target file when source is deleted = -Ds
Try to integrate changes when source is deleted and re-added = -Di
You can learn more about them in the integrate command help (type "p4 help integrate" at the command line).
What does "Do not get latest revision
of selected files" have to do with
integrating?
This tells Perforce to use the workspace revision of the target file. By default, the head revision of the target file is automatically retrieved into the workspace before integrating. Say you have made one revision to a branch file and integrated it back into the trunk. The trunk and branch now have two revisions of this file. You submit a change to the branch file so it now has 3 revisions. You sync the branch file back to revision 2. If you were to do a normal integration right now, Perforce would assume you want to integrate everything up to the head revision and would integrate revision 3 of the branch file into the trunk. If you were to select this option, it would say, "all revision(s) already integrated" because you have revision 2 in your workspace. It would be the same as attempting to integrate with the "Limit the range of the integration:" option set to "Integrate all revisions up to:" Revision 2.
What does "Disregard indirect
integration history" mean? I've never
used it, since it sounds scary.
I can't figure out, nor find any info about, what this does.
In general, to merge two files, perforce looks for a "base", the closest revision to the two files, and uses that to provide a much better diff than just directly running a diffing the two files. See Knowledge Base Article. Without knowing your perforce setup, I couldn't say what was going wrong, however, p4win has some nice graphical tools to visualize branches, you might be able to determine why perforce can't find a base for you. This is also what "Disregard indirect integration history" does: stops it from looking for the base.
For the "don't sync to head": when integrating, your "target" is the files in your local client, which you aren't specifying a revision for; instead, perforce will either sync your revision head (if you don't use "-h"), or will use the one you currently have. You can't specify an arbitrary revision because your local client only has a particular one.
"Enable integrate over deleted targets" can lead to problems if done blindly. Here's an example: Imagine you refactor your code in your next release branch, and eliminate a source file as a result - the functionality was merged into some other source files. You then fix a bug in that original source file in a maintenance branch for the previous release. If you integrate over delete by default, the dead source file comes back, but it won't be built and the bug wouldn't have been fixed. It'd better to be warned that this occurred so you could manually merge the fix into the other source files.
So I get that most of you are frowning at me for not currently using any source control. I want to, I really do, now that I've spent some time reading the questions / answers here. I am a hobby programmer and really don't do much more than tinker, but I've been bitten a couple of times now not having the 'time machine' handy...
I still have to decide which product I'll go with, but that's not relevant to this question.
I'm really struggling with the flow of files under source control, so much so I'm not even sure how to pose the question sensibly.
Currently I have a directory hierarchy where all my PHP files live in a Linux Environment. I edit them there and can hit refresh on my browser to see what happens.
As I understand it, my files now live in a different place. When I want to edit, I check it out and edit away. But what is my substitute for F5? How do I test it? Do I have to check it back in, then hit F5? I admit to a good bit of trial and error in my work. I suspect I'm going to get tired of checking in and out real quick for the frequent small changes I tend to make. I have to be missing something, right?
Can anyone step me through where everything lives and how I test along the way, while keeping true to the goal of having a 'time machine' handy?
Eric Sink has a great series of posts on source control basics. His company (Sourcegear) makes a source control tool called Vault, but the how-to is generally pretty system agnostic.
Don't edit your code on production.
Create a development environment, with the appropriate services (apache w/mod_php).
The application directory within your dev environment is where you do your work.
Put your current production app in there.
Commit this directory to the source control tool. (now you have populated source control with your application)
Make changes in your new development environment, hitting F5 when you want to see/test what you've changed.
Merge/Commit your changes to source control.
Actually, your files, while stored in a source repository (big word for another place on your hard drive, or a hard drive somewhere else), can also exist on your local machine, too, just where they exist now.
So, all files that aren't checked out would be marked as "read only", if you are using VSS (not sure about SVN, CVS, etc). So, you could still run your website by hitting "F5" and it will reload the files where they currently are. If you check one out and are editing it, it becomes NOT read only, and you can change it.
Regardless, the web server that you are running will load readonly/writable files with the same effect.
You still have all the files on your hard drive, ready for F5!
The difference is that you can "checkpoint" your files into the repository. Your daily life doesn't have to change at all.
You can do a "checkout" to the same directory where you currently work so that doesn't have to change. Basically your working directory doesn't need to change.
This is a wildly open ended question because how you use a SCM depends heavily on which SCM you choose. A distributed SCM like git works very differently from a centralized one like Subversion.
svn is way easier to digest for the "new user", but git can be a little more powerful and improve your workflow. Subversion also has really great docs and tool support (like trac), and an online book that you should read:
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/
It will cover the basics of source control management which will help you in some way no matter which SCM you ultimately choose, so I recommend skimming the first few chapters.
edit: Let me point out why people are frowning on you, by the way: SCM is more than simply a "backup of your code". Having "timemachine" is nothing like an SCM. With an SCM you can go back in your change history and see what you actually changed and when which is something you'll never get with blobs of code. I'm sure you've asked yourself on more than one occasion: "how did this code get here?" or "I thought I fixed that bug"-- if you did, thats why you need SCM.
You don't "have" to change your workflow in a drastic way. You could, and in some cases you should, but that's not something version control dictates.
You just use the files as you would normally. Only under version control, once you reach a certain state of "finished" or at least "working" (solved an issue in your issue tracker, finished a certain method, tweaked something, etc), you check it in.
If you have more than one developer working on your codebase, be sure to update regularly, so you're always working against a recent (merged) version of the code.
Here is the general workflow that you'd use with a non-centralized source control system like CVS or Subversion: At first you import your current project into the so-called repository, a versioned storage of all your files. Take care only to import hand-generated files (source, data files, makefiles, project files). Generated files (object files, executables, generated documentation) should not be put into the repository.
Then you have to check out your working copy. As the name implies, this is where you will do all your local edits, where you will compile and where you will point your test server at. It's basically the replacement to where you worked at before. You only need to do these steps once per project (although you could check out multiple working copies, of course.)
This is the basic work cycle: At first you check out all changes made in the repository into your local working copy. When working in a team, this would bring in any changes other team members made since your last check out. Then you do your work. When you've finished with a set of work, you should check out the current version again and resolve possible conflicts due to changes by other team members. (In a disciplined team, this is usually not a problem.) Test, and when everything works as expected you commit (check in) your changes. Then you can continue working, and once you've finished again, check out, resolve conflicts, and check in again. Please note that you should only commit changes that were tested and work. How often you check in is a matter of taste, but a general rule says that you should commit your changes at least once at the end of your day. Personally, I commit my changes much more often than that, basically whenever I made a set of related changes that pass all tests.
Great question. With source control you can still do your "F5" refresh process. But after each edit (or a few minor edits) you want to check your code in so you have a copy backed up.
Depending on the source control system, you don't have to explicitly check out the file each time. Just editing the file will check it out. I've written a visual guide to source control that many people have found useful when grokking the basics.
I would recommend a distributed version control system (mercurial, git, bazaar, darcs) rather than a centralized version control system (cvs, svn). They're much easier to setup and work with.
Try mercurial (which is the VCS that I used to understand how version control works) and then if you like you can even move to git.
There's a really nice introductory tutorial on Mercurial's homepage: Understanding Mercurial. That will introduce you to the basic concepts on VCS and how things work. It's really great. After that I suggest you move on to the Mercurial tutorials: Mercurial tutorial page, which will teach you how to actually use Mercurial. Finally, you have a free ebook that is a really great reference on how to use Mercurial: Distributed Revision Control with Mercurial
If you're feeling more adventurous and want to start off with Git straight away, then this free ebook is a great place to start: Git Magic (Very easy read)
In the end, no matter what VCS tool you choose, what you'll end up doing is the following:
Have a repository that you don't manually edit, it only for the VCS
Have a working directory, where you make your changes as usual.
Change what you like, press F5 as many times as you wish. When you like what you've done and think you would like to save the project the way it is at that very moment (much like you would do when you're, for example, writing something in Word) you can then commit your changes to the repository.
If you ever need to go back to a certain state in your project you now have the power to do so.
And that's pretty much it.
If you are using Subversion, you check out your files once . Then, whenever you have made big changes (or are going to lunch or whatever), you commit them to the server. That way you can keep your old work flow by pressing F5, but every time you commit you save a copy of all the files in their current state in your SVN-repository.
Depends on the source control system you use. For example, for subversion and cvs your files can reside in a remote location, but you always check out your own copy of them locally. This local copy (often referred to as the working copy) are just regular files on the filesystem with some meta-data to let you upload your changes back to the server.
If you are using Subversion here's a good tutorial.
Depending on the source control system, 'checkout' may mean different things. In the SVN world, it just means retrieving (could be an update, could be a new file) the latest copy from the repository. In the source-safe world, that generally means updating the existing file and locking it. The text below uses the SVN meaning:
Using PHP, what you want to do is checkout your entire project/site to a working folder on a test apache site. You should have the repository set up so this can happen with a single checkout, including any necessary sub folders. You checkout your project to set this up one time.
Now you can make your changes and hit F5 to refresh as normal. When you're happy with a set of changes to support a particular fix or feature, you can commit in as a unit (with appropriate comments, of course). This puts the latest version in the repository.
Checking out/committing one file at a time would be a hassle.
A source control system is generally a storage place for your files and their history and usually separate from the files you're currently working on. It depends a bit on the type of version control system but suppose you're using something CVS-like (like subversion), then all your files will live in two (or more) places. You have the files in your local directory, the so called "working copy" and one in the repository, which can be located in another local folder, or on another machine, usually accessed over the network. Usually, after the first import of your files into the repository you check them out under a working folder where you continue working on them. I assume that would be the folder where your PHP files now live.
Now what happens when you've checked out a copy and you made some non-trivial changes that you want to "save"? You simply commit those changes in your working copy to the version control system. Now you have a history of your changes. Should you at any point wish to go back to the version at which you committed those changes, then you can simply revert your working copy to an older revision (the name given to the set of changes that you commit at once).
Note that this is all very CVS/SVN-specific, as GIT would work slightly different. I'd recommend starting with subversion and reading the first few chapters of the very excellent SVN Book to get you started.
This is all very subjective depending on the the source control solution that you decide to use. One that you will definitely want to look into is Subversion.
You mentioned that you're doing PHP, but are you doing it in a Linux environment or Windows? It's not really important, but what I typically did when I worked in a PHP environment was to have a production branch and a development branch. This allowed me to configure a cron job (a scheduled task in Windows) for automatically pulling from the production-ready branch for the production server, while pulling from the development branch for my dev server.
Once you decide on a tool, you should really spend some time learning how it works. The concepts of checking in and checking out don't apply to all source control solutions, for example. Either way, I'd highly recommend that you pick one that permits branching. This article goes over a great (in my opinion) source control model to follow in a production environment.
Of course, I state all this having not "tinkered" in years. I've been doing professional development for some time and my techniques might be overkill for somebody in your position. Not to say that there's anything wrong with that, however.
I just want to add that the system that I think was easiest to set up and work with was Mercurial. If you work alone and not in a team you just initialize it in your normal work folder and then go on from there. The normal flow is to edit any file using your favourite editor and then to a checkin (commit).
I havn't tried GIT but I assume it is very similar. Monotone was a little bit harder to get started with. These are all distributed source control systems.
It sounds like you're asking about how to use source control to manage releases.
Here's some general guidance that's not specific to websites:
Use a local copy for developing changes
Compile (if applicable) and test your changes before checking in
Run automated builds and tests as often as possible (at least daily)
Version your daily builds (have some way of specifying the exact bits of code corresponding to a particular build and test run)
If possible, use separate branches for major releases (or have a development and a release branch)
When necessary, stabilize your code base (define a set of tests such that passing all of those tests means you are confident enough in the quality of your product to release it, then drive toward 0 test failures, i.e. ban any checkins to the release branch other than fixes for the outstanding issues)
When you have a build which has the features you want and has passed all of the necessary tests, deploy it.
If you have a small team, a stable product, a fast build, and efficient, high-quality tests then this entire process might be 100% automated and could take place in minutes.
I recommend Subversion. Setting up a repository and using it is actually fairly trivial, even from the command line. Here's how it would go:
if you haven't setup your repo (repository)
1) Make sure you've got Subversion installed on your server
$ which svn
/usr/bin/svn
which is a tool that tells you the path to another tool. if it returns nothing that tool is not installed on your system
1b) If not, get it
$ apt-get install subversion
apt-get is a tool that installs other tools onto your system
If that's not the right name for subversion in apt, try this
$ apt-cache search subversion
or this
$ apt-cache search svn
Find the right package name and install it using apt-get install packagename
2) Create a new repository on your server
$ cd /path/to/directory/of/repositories
$ svnadmin create my_repository
svnadmin create reponame creates a new repository in the present working directory (pwd) with the name reponame
You are officially done creating your repository
if you have an existing repo, or have finished setting it up
1) Make sure you've got Subversion installed on your local machine per the instructions above
2) Check out the repository to your local machine
$ cd /repos/on/your/local/machine
$ svn co svn+ssh://www.myserver.com/path/to/directory/of/repositories/my_repository
svn co is the command you use to check out a repository
3) Create your initial directory structure (optional)
$ cd /repos/on/your/local/machine
$ cd my_repository
$ svn mkdir branches
$ svn mkdir tags
$ svn mkdir trunk
$ svn commit -m "Initial structure"
svn mkdir runs a regular mkdir and creates a directory in the present working directory with the name you supply after typing svn mkdir and then adds it to the repository.
svn commit -m "" sends your changes to the repository and updates it. Whatever you place in the quotes after -m is the comment for this commit (make it count!).
The "working copy" of your code would go in the trunk directory. branches is used for working on individual projects outside of trunk; each directory in branches is a copy of trunk for a different sub project. tags is used more releases. I suggest just focusing on trunk for a while and getting used to Subversion.
working with your repo
1) Add code to your repository
$ cd /repos/on/your/local/machine
$ svn add my_new_file.ext
$ svn add some/new/directory
$ svn add some/directory/*
$ svn add some/directory/*.ext
The second to last line adds every file in that directory. The last line adds every file with the extension .ext.
2) Check the status of your repository
$ cd /repos/on/your/local/machine
$ svn status
That will tell you if there are any new files, and updated files, and files with conflicts (differences between your local version and the version on the server), etc.
3) Update your local copy of your repository
$ cd /repos/on/your/local/machine
$ svn up
Updating pulls any new changes from the server you don't already have
svn up does care what directory you're in. If you want to update your entire repository, makre sure you're in the root directory of the repository (above trunk)
That's all you really need to know to get started. For more information I recommend you check out the Subversion Book.