Section 8.2. Accessing Directly from an IDE

8.2. Accessing Directly from an IDE

When using an integrated development environment (IDE), it is usually easiest to be able to deal with Subversion directly inside the IDE interface. Fortunately, many popular IDEs are starting to add support for Subversion and others have plug-ins available that provide integrated support. As an example of what's available, here are a couple of plug-ins that will allow you to access Subversion directly from Microsoft's Visual Studio.Net and Eclipse.

As a general side note when dealing with integrated clients: many don't have support for unknown SSL certificates. If you need to use them to access a repository with an unknown certificate, you may have to first access that repository using the command-line client. When the command-line client asks you for permission to accept the unknown certificate, you should then tell it to accept permanently. After that, you should be able to use the integrated tool to access your repository with no troubles.

8.2.1. Visual Studio.Net

If your development environment of choice (or necessity) is Microsoft's Visual Studio.Net, you can use the AnkhSVN (ankhsvn.tigris.org) project to integrate the VS.net work environment with Subversion (see Figure 8.4). AnkhSVN is still in a beta release state, and doesn't yet support every Subversion feature (most notably, it has no properties support), but it is quite usable for most daily development work, and any missing features can still be accessed from the command line.

Figure 8.4. A commit from Visual Studio.Net, with AnkhSVN.

Features

Like many of the other Subversion integration tools, Subversion commands are accessed via AnkhSVN through menu items added to a pop-up menu. In this case, the items are added to the VS.net Solution Explorer, where you can right-click on files and select AnkhSVN commands (see Figure 8.5). Additionally, the Solution Explorer also shows file status by placing small icons on each file, such as a red M for modified files, and a green checkmark for files that are up-to-date. In addition to the critical basic features like committing and updating, AnkhSVN also supports graphical views of diffs, switching a file to a branch or tag, and creation of patches.

Figure 8.5. The AnkhSVN context menu.

8.2.2. Eclipse

If you're a Java developer, the chances are that you are familiar with the open source Eclipse IDE. It has quickly become one of the most popular integrated development environments for anyone working with Java, and for good reason. One of its most powerful features is its excellent plug-in system, which allows third parties to easily develop plugins that integrate seamlessly with the core Eclipse system. One such plug-in is Subclipse (http://subclipse.tigris.org), which integrates the capability to work with a Subversion repository into Eclipse (see Figure 8.6).

Figure 8.6. Subclipse, showing a graphical diff of two versions of a file.

Features

With Subclipse, you can check out new working copies from a repository and import them into Eclipse, bring an already checked-out working copy under Eclipse control, or create a brand new project that will be automatically imported into a Subversion repository.

Subclipse adds three new submenus to the pop-up menu that appears when you rightclick on files or folders in the Eclipse file list, which give you control over a working copy. Figure 8.7 shows all three submenus in action.

• The Team submenu gives access to a number of common Subversion commands, which allow you to easily update, commit, and manipulate properties.

• The Compare With submenu gives you the ability to graphically compare files in your working copy with different versions of the file in the repository.

• The Replace With submenu allows you to exchange the version of a file in your working copy with another revision (i.e., svn update -r).

Figure 8.7. The three Subclipse context menus.