Configure Subversion with Apache on Slackware 13

Source control is something every developer should use. Fortunately Slackware 13 comes with it pre-installed. All we have to do is configure it.

Note: This guide assumes that subversion and apache are installed, but that apache is not configured for subversion support.

Step 1: Create a SVN User

While not strictly necessary I prefer to have a seperate 'svn' user. Login as root and use the adduser command to create the new user.

su
adduser

Step 2: Create the Repositories Directory

We now need to create a direcory to house all our repositories.

mkdir -p /home/svn/repositories

Step 3: Enable SVN Support in Apache

To enable apache to support subversion we need to make a few changes to the apache config files. First open the httpd.conf file for editing and add the following to the modules section to load the svn modules. On a default install this is located at '/etc/httpd/httpd.conf'.

LoadModule dav_svn_module modules/mod_dav_svn.so
LoadModule authz_svn_module modules/mod_authz_svn.so

Note: For reference in slackware the apache modules folder is located at "/usr/lib/httpd/modules".