Over the past decade, I’ve primarily used two version control products: Visual Source Safe and Borland StarTeam.  I was “forced” into using StarTeam about 5 years ago, but having used it day-in and day-out for so long, I’ve come to recognize it as the superior of the two products (hands down.)  Through blogs and open source projects, SubVersion has gained my attention and I’m now giving it a whirl as well.  Having just installed it and TortoiseSVN (both open source) on my laptop, I thought I would walk you through my steps:

SubVersion

The goal of the Subversion project is to build a version control system that is a compelling replacement for CVS in the open source community. For a full list of features, visit the site: http://subversion.tigris.org/

For Windows Installations, you may find the latest installer (svn-1.4.2-setup.exe) here - http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/ProjectDocumentList?folderID=91. A list of other packages are here.

Just follow the installer steps.  The installation is quick and painless…

TortoiseSVN

Tortoise is a  SubVersion client, implemented as a windows shell extension. As stated on their site:

TortoiseSVN is a really easy to use Revision control / version control / source control software for Windows. Since it’s not an integration for a specific IDE you can use it with whatever development tools you like.  TortoiseSVN is free to use. You don’t need to get a loan or pay a full years salary to use it.

The image below gives you an idea of what Tortoise has to offer.  To learn more, visit http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/. 

The latest TortoiseSVN installer (TortoiseSVN-1.4.1.7992-win32-svn-1.4.2.msi ) can be found on the downloads page - http://tortoisesvn.net/downloads. 

This installation is easy as well, but it did require a reboot. 

Getting Started

I followed this Practical Guide to SubVersion on Windows with TortoiseSVN to get myself going.  You may also find Tortoise manuals here or they are available by pressing F1 in any TortoiseSVN dialog once the product is installed. 

I won’t say the setup is very intuitive and I was happy to find a tutorial.   Most importantly, I’m really happy I have friends who have been using SubVersion/Tortoise for a while now.  In fact, I’m hoping to provide a little more insight into using SubVersion once I get the skinny from Jon Galloway next week. 

Stay tuned…