Getting the Hang of Subversion

I’ve been playing around with Subversion and TortoiseSVN again! This time I think I’ve got the hang of it :) For those of you who aren’t aware what Subversion is, it’s a handy way of versioning and backing up your website projects.

The way it typically works is that you have a ‘repository’, a central location on your hard drive or network where all the backups and versions of your website are stored. When you are working on a site, you check out the latest version where you can then do whatever you want with the code… once you’ve finished adding a new feature to the site or whatever you want, you ‘commit’ or check in where you sign your name against the date, time and leave a message about the change that you made.

The powerful thing about Subversion is that now you have: -

• A dated log of every single change you made to the site
• A complete backup of the website since the very beginning
• The ability to flip back to the way the site was at a particular date

And as we have all been told, since the beginning of the Unix Epoch to keep a log and back up everything… this can only be a good thing… If only to stop the network guys smirking at us next time our hard drive corrupts. …yes! It will be worth it!