Automatic Backup with SVN on Windows

A while ago, I decided that I needed to have a better backup solution for my file server. After doing some research on various systems, I let my inner programmer take over - in addition to my desire to NEVER LOSE ANYTHING - and I defaulted to use SVN.

I was using a Windows machine as my file server - so I wrote some batch files. I also had SVN installed on the machine. The final touch was adding scheduled tasks.

The setup includes a computer that is always on with windows, svn command line, and 5 directories to monitor for backups.

First thing’s first, do an SVN Checkout

The very first thing I did was make an SVN checkout in all of the five parent directories. This way I can continue to use SVN add, svn commit without any other interaction. Don’t worry, we’ll use recursion!

Create the full list of backups

So, first thing’s first: Create the list of directories that need to be monitored. I made them in this txt file named svndirectories.txt:

D:\pictures D:\storage\videos\misc D:\storage\files\art D:\storage\files\NeverAgain D:\storage\files\Therapee

Note, all of them are separated by a space. This becomes important in our next batch script.

Schedule the SVN Add

I added an SVN Add batch script at Midnight on sundays. Actually, there are two batch files. I made them separately so that I could invoke a scheduled task - but also run the “add” by hand if need be.

The first file:

@echo off

REM ------------------------------------------------------------------
REM - forces adds on all svn files
REM ------------------------------------------------------------------


:START
REM - Get file to process
set direct=%1
echo %direct%
echo.

:SVNADD
svn add --force %direct%\*

:NEXTFILE
shift
if "%1"=="" goto END
goto START


:END

That will force an add of each file passed in on the command line. Then, the batch file that I made to be ran from the scheduler will read in the folders from the text file, and run this script. Here it is:

@echo off
REM - This is what should be scheduled to add files to svn repos

REM - read in svndirectories.txt
for /f "tokens=*" %%a in ('type svndirectories.txt 2^>NUL') do set value=%%a

REM - call the addsvn program with all the directories
addsvn %value%

Theoretically, I could have called it with the entire line of files after it, but I wanted to call them separately to handle errors better.

After all of these have been added, let’s move on…

Schedule SVN Commit

Just in case I made a huge addition of files, I let an hour pass between scheduled add and scheduled commits. Additionally, I ran the commit every day instead of every week. I figured I’d make more changes than I would make additions.

So first, read in all of the directories again and run the commit. Then, the file to schedule. These are pretty much similar, just different commands:

@echo off

REM ------------------------------------------------------------------
REM - commits all SVN changes
REM ------------------------------------------------------------------


:START
REM - Get file to process
set direct=%1
echo %direct%
echo.

:SVNCOMMIT
svn commit --message="Auto Backup" %direct%\*

:NEXTFILE
shift
if "%1"=="" goto END
goto START


:END

@echo off
REM - This is what should be scheduled to commit files to svn repos

REM - read in svndirectories.txt
for /f "tokens=*" %%a in ('type svndirectories.txt 2^>NUL') do set value=%%a

REM - call the addsvn program with all the directories
commitsvn %value%

This has worked out pretty well for me. If you see anything I could do better, please let me know!