WordPress / WordPress/Documentation-Issue-Tracker

[DevHub] Improve best practices in our Using Subversion guide

Open Beginner friendly
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[Status] Review developer documentation (DevHub) plugins
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Description

Issue Description

Hi!

I submitted a new plugin a few days ago and got SVN access to the plugins repository, as well as a congratulations e-mail, with a link to the Using Subversion document. The documentation mentions things like "Checkout the root of your repository" which is exactly what users should not be doing, and likely the cause of many complaints in the WordPress community about their Subversion folders being over 80GB in size.

Instead, they should checkout the trunk directory of their repository and commit changes there. If they need to tag a release, this can (and should) be done remotely:

svn cp ^/plugin-slug/trunk ^/plugin-slug/tags/1.0

If one needs to switch to a tag it's:

svn sw ^/plugin-slug/tags/1.0

Then back to trunk:

svn sw ^/plugin-slug/trunk

To delete an old tag

svn rm ^/plugin-slug/tags/0.9

URL of the Page with the Issue

https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-org/how-to-use-subversion/

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the Using Subversion guide at https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-org/how-to-use-subversion/ and review its checkout instructions. Update the guidance to use the trunk directory, include the remote tag, switch, and delete commands shown in the issue, and remove advice to check out the repository root. Done means the guide reflects these best practices clearly.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Clearly specified
Newbie friendliness
72/100

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