Organization of This Book

The chapters that follow and their contents are summarized here:

Chapter 1

Covers the history of Subversion, as well as its features, architecture, components, and install methods. Also includes a quick-start guide.

Chapter 2

Explains the basics of version control and different versioning models, along with Subversion's repository, working copies, and revisions.

Chapter 3

Walks you through a day in the life of a Subversion user. It demonstrates how to use Subversion to obtain, modify, and commit data.

Chapter 4

Discusses branches, merges, and tagging, including best practices for branching and merging, common use-cases, how to undo changes, and how to easily swing from one branch to the next.

Chapter 5

Describes the basics of the Subversion repository, how to create, configure, and maintain a repository, and the tools you can use to do all of this.

Chapter 6

Explains how to configure your Subversion server and the three ways to access your repository: HTTP, the svn protocol, and local access. It also covers the details of authentication, authorization and anonymous access.

Chapter 7

Explores the Subversion client configuration files, file and directory properties, how to ignore files in your working copy, how to include external trees in your working copy, and lastly, how to handle vendor branches.

Chapter 8

Describes the internals of Subversion, the Subversion filesystem, and the working copy administrative areas from a programmer's point of view. Demonstrates how to use the public APIs to write a program that uses Subversion, and most importantly, how to contribute to the development of Subversion.

Chapter 9

Explains in great detail every subcommand of svn, svnadmin, and svnlook with plenty of examples for the whole family!

Appendix A

Covers the similarities and differences between Subversion and CVS, with numerous suggestions on how to break all the bad habits you picked up from years of using CVS. Included are descriptions of Subversion revision numbers, versioned directories, offline operations, update vs. status, branches, tags, metadata, conflict resolution, and authentication.

Appendix B

Addresses common problems and difficulties using and building Subversion.

Appendix C

Describes the details of WebDAV and DeltaV, and how you can configure your Subversion repository to be mounted read/write as a DAV share.

Appendix D

Discusses tools that support or use Subversion, including alternative client programs, repository browser tools, and so on.

Appendix E

Lists the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 legal code.