Inside the Working Copy Administration Area

As we mentioned earlier, each directory of a Subversion working copy contains a special subdirectory called .svn which houses administrative data about that working copy directory. Subversion uses the information in .svn to keep track of things like:

• Which repository location(s) are represented by the files and subdirectories in the working copy directory.

• What revision of each of those files and directories are currently present in the working copy.

• Any user-defined properties that might be attached to those files and directories.

• Pristine (un-edited) copies of the working copy files.

While there are several other bits of data stored in the .svn directory, we will examine only a couple of the most important items.