How to … Access Subversion from C#

Allthough there are a lot of language bindings available for Subversion, C# is not one of them. A few resources on the internet provide some kind of binding but they are all external to the Subversion project.

With IKVM however, you can compile the Java language binding of the Subversion project to make it accessible using C#.

Here is how you do it:

Getting the necessary files

Install IKVM.NET

You can download IKVM.NET from their website. Just go to the download section and click through to Sourceforge. Select the file with “bin” in its name because that file contains the binaries. Because I used version 0.30.0.0 the file was named ” ikvmbin-0.30.0.0.zip”. You can download it using this link.

After downloading this file, you must unzip it in some folder. This is the folder structure that will result:

Install the Subversion java language bindings

For this you must go to the Subversion website and select the “Documents & files” inside the “Project tools” item on the left. Next expand following nodes in the central tree structure:
subversion > Releases > Windows

Then look for a file named svn-win32-(version)_javahl.zip in which (version) is of course the version. I used version 1.3.1 which is not the most recent. You can find it in the “Windows Archive” node.

The file I used had thus the name “svn-win32-1.3.1_javahl.zip”.

Once downloaded you unzip it into a folder of your choice. After this you end up with following folderstructure:

Using the Subversion java language bindings

Compiling the java language bindings for .NET

Copy the complete content of the IKVM.NET “bin” folder to the Subversion language bindings “javahl” folder. Like this all files are in the same folder.

Open a command window in this folder and type following on the commandline:

ikvmc svnjavahl.jar

IKVM.NET will compile the provided jar file and produce a dll with the same name. This dll contains the .NET version of the java classes.

Accessing a Subversion repository from C#

Create a console application in your favourite IDE.

Add references to the following files:

• IKVM.GNU.Classpath.dll (which comes with IKVM.NET)
• svnjavahl.dll (which you created by compiling svnjavahl.jzr with IKVM.NET)

Copy the following code in the project you just created:

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

 

namespace SubversionTest

{

    class MainClass

    {

        public static void Main(string[] args)

        {

            org.tigris.subversion.javahl.SVNClient svnClient

                = new org.tigris.subversion.javahl.SVNClient();   

 

            // replace the following string with the name of a

            //  subversion repsoitory available to you

            //  example “svn://localhost/MyProject”

            string moduleName = “<yourRepo>”;

 

            // replace the following string with the name of a

            //  folder available on your computer

            //  example “c:/MyProject”

            string destinationFolder = “<yourFolder>”;

            org.tigris.subversion.javahl.Revision revision =

                org.tigris.subversion.javahl.Revision.HEAD;

            bool recurse = true;

 

            svnClient.checkout(moduleName, destinationFolder, revision, recurse);

        }

    }

}

Do not forget to replace the strings with appropriate values for your setup.

Compile the project

Copy following files to the folder containing the build results (typically a subfolder bin\Debug for the debug version or bin\Release for the release version)

• ikvm-native.dll
• libsvnjavahl-1.dll

Hit the Run button.
If everything went well your repository shuold be chacked out on your computer.

Resources

[1] IKVM.NET and how to convert a java application to .NET
[2] Subversion and Documents & files
[3] Online documentation for javahl classes can be viewed here

Updates

21 December 2006: original version