svnwiki : faq

How come I can't edit a certain file?

If, when you try to edit a file through the web interface and you only get the "Differences" and "Preview" buttons but not the "Save" button, this is very likely because the svnwiki:frozen property is set on the file. This property makes Svnwiki refuse to let users modify the files it's set on through the web interface, regardless of the identity they use.

However, if you get a Save button, but it requires authentication, then it's very likely because the svnwiki:authenticate property is set to yes on the file or on the directory. This property makes Svnwiki refuse to let unauthenticated users modify the files it's set on through the web interface.

You can permit anonymous discussion while restricting modification by setting svnwiki:authenticate to no in the xsvnwiki-discuss directory, or in the corresponding file.

How do I add tags to a file?

Set the svnwiki:tags property on it to the list of tags.

Through the web interface, setting some properties at the root of your repository will allow you to modify this property through the web interface through the metadata extension.

Note that you can only use alphanumeric characters as the tags, other characters will be ignored.

In the past it was possible to use the following sequence, but this is now deprecated and won't be supported in the future:

[[tags: ... ]]

How do I have a file show a table of contents at its beginning?

To include the table of contents of the current file, add the following sequence at its beginning:

[[toc:]]

This will be replaced with a list of all the sections (titles) of the current file.

Are files in a Svnwiki repository case sensitive?

Yes, they are. All wiki repositories should standarize on having all files in all-lowercase characters.

Files "Alejo" and "alejo" are differently treated. Svnwiki, however, handles local links intelligently. Suppose it comes across a link to file "Foo":

• If the linked-to file exists, nothing special is done with the link, it is left as is.
• Otherwise the link is made to an all-lowercase version of the file ("foo"). As a consequence, new files will usually be created in lowercase and, once created, the link will send visitors to it.

Note that, as a consequence, you could use a link such as Alejo to have it shown that way in the HTML page but it would take you to alejo unless Alejo indeed exists (and, if he doesn't, who wrote this?).

How do I edit a discussion with my favourite editor?

Note: this answer is out of date. It applies to an old format for discussions. It still needs to be updated to the new format.

Editing the corresponding file in the "xsvnwiki-discuss" directory. Basically, a comment is structured in the following way:

SEPARATOR
...
TEXT
...
SIGNATURE 

SEPARATOR = ---- (only necessary if there exists a previous comment).
TEXT = any valid character defined in svnwiki-charset.
SIGNATURE = -- '''USER''', DATE 
USER = your username, nickname, first name or full name.
DATE = the output of the date command.

If you use VIM as your text editor, you might find it useful to define a command to insert your signature at the end of your comments. To do this you must add the following code to your ~/.vimrc file:

com -nargs=0 Sign call SignatureInsert()
function SignatureInsert()
        read !echo -- \'\'\'$USER\'\'\', $(date)
endfunction

Now you can sign your comments when you edit them with VIM with the Sign command, eg. :Sign.

How can I regenerate the estraier database?

Erase the last-revision.txt file, deps.db and estraier-db and then run the post-commit hook (make sure it gets run by the usual user, so you won't run into permission problems). It will regenerate everything, including the estraier-db.

I get error: Can't open file '/TMP-PATH/.svn/lock': Permission denied

If you get an error in your log saying

svn: Can't open file '/TMP-PATH/.svn/lock': Permission denied ,

it's probably because you might have checked out TMP-PATH yourself (as a user other than the one your CGI applications run as). Just erase it and let svnwiki check out a copy itself:

rm -R /TMP-PATH

Why doesn't a given file get converted from wiki to HTML but just included verbatim?

This is likely because the file has the Subversion property svn:mime-type set to some value such as application/octet-stream. This property tells Svnwiki that the file is not a normal wiki file but rather that it should be included directly in the visible web tree, without any modifications.

To fix that, simply remove the svn:mime-type property from the file:

svn pd svn:mime-type file