Acknowledgments

I would like to thank everyone who made this book possible. First, my parents for giving me the support to become the person I am today, and for not dropping me off at an orphanage (however tempting the option may have been). And the rest of my family and friendsespecially my lovely fiancée, Sarawho never ceased to support me, no matter how many times I said, "Sorry, I can't. I have to work on my book." I'd also like to thank my coworkers at Stage Logic who never complained when I fled work early or skipped out on a few days. I'd especially like to thank Ralph Rodkey for helping me to research some of the Windows-specific aspects of Subversion; Drew Hintz for loaning me his laptop to play around with Windows myself; and Zach Lute, because I told him I would, even though I can't remember why.

I am grateful to Martin Streicher of Linux Magazine for giving me my first opportunity as a published writer, and for giving me the opportunity to write the article on Subversion that ultimately led to this book. I am also grateful to Jill Harry at Prentice Hall for giving the opportunity to write this book and for supporting me the whole way. Of course, she couldn't have done it alone, so I'd also like to thank Brenda Mulligan, John Fuller, Robin O'Brien, Ebony Haight, Lara Wysong, Kelli Brooks, and the rest of the Prentice Hall team who have worked very hard to make this book a reality.

This book is not just the work of one mind, either. Without the many who reviewed and commented on my book along the way, it would be a much lesser book. I would like to thank Michael Ching, Stuart Robertson, and Gustavo Niemeyer for their reviews of the book's concept. I'd also like to thank Michael Ching and Gustavo Niemeyer, as well as Ben Reser and Chris Pavicich for their invaluable input on the book after it was written. I'm also grateful to thank Mike Treaster for his commentary on several early chapters from the perspective of a non-version control expert; to Jason Reese for his commentary from the perspective of someone who thought version control was a song by Prince; to Jim Markham for his valuable input on the book's layout and writing style in the early chapters; and to Ted Gould for reading those early chapters, even if he never got around to actually telling me what he thought.

Many thanks also goes out to those people who contributed their real-world experiences to allow me to prepare the case studies near the end of the book: Mark Grosberg of Glade-Soft, Felix Collins of KeyGhost, Robert Allan Zeh of Error Free Software, Mark Bohlman of Teledata Communications, Ron Bieber, Chris Wein, and John Szakmeister. And, of course, many thanks goes to Stuart Robertson of Absolute Systems for his contributions of the RSS feed script and Samba/Windows Domain Controller configuration steps.

Without Subversion, this book would not be. So, a sincerely grateful thanks goes out to everyone who has contributed to Subversion and made it the great version control system that it is today.

I've tried hard to ensure that everyone who helped me with this book has been thanked. However, I may have inadvertently left someone out. To that person, I extend an extra thanks for putting up with my faulty memory.

Finally, thanks goes to K.C. Sanborn, whose continued inability to grasp the concept of a SCSI bus has helped me keep a proper perspective on the place of computers in the world.