Better SCM Initiative : Subversion
Note about Relevance
As of 2018, this site has become mostly irrelevant.
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Summary
Subversion is a project that was meant to be a better replacement for CVS - solving the main issues that CVS has and offering some other power. As opposed to other revision control systems, Subversion did not start as an internally used system that was eventually made public, but was rather designed from the grounds up as "shrinkwrap".
Subversion has a very modular and algorithmically-sane design, and uses well-known technologies such as Berkeley DB 4.0, Apache 2.0, mod_dav, the Apache Portable Run-Time and the Neon library. Its code is of high quality and there are strict coding conventions. All in all it is a very professional product. Finally, Subversion is fully open-source and distributed under the Apache License.
Among its extra features are versioned file renames and copies, atomic commits and implicit changesets, a comprehensive API, ability to be networked over HTTP and HTTPS, versioned directories, and efficient handling of binary files.
Articles
Subversion - a Compelling Alternative to CVS and BitKeeper.
Subversion Win32 Installation Tutorial - a quick walkthrough for installing Subversion on Microsoft Windows systems.
Resources for Learning Subversion
- Version Control with Subversion - a free, open, and online book covering Subversion by some of Subversion’s creators.
- Google Search for “subversion tutorial” - yields many results, but no first-hand recommendation.
Links
- Dmoz.org's Subversion Category - contains many links.
- svk - a version control systems based on Subversion that aims to offer other advantages. (like distributed repositories)
- Dispelling Subversion FUD - an essay by Ben Collins-Sussman, that attempts to dispel a lot of common dis-information regarding Subversion.
- Debunking BitMover's Subversion Comparison - an essay on the subversion site, which debunks the comparison between BitKeeper and Subversion that was published on the BitKeeper site.
- How does Subversion compare to the XYZ Version Control System? - a list of links to comparisons and other resources by Gabor Szabo.