Likelihood to Recommend It's a relatively simple version control system so it works great for an individual or small team (less than 10 people). But if you have a medium to large team, especially one with members distributed over a large geographic area, or one where individuals need to be able to work "offline" without access to a central server, Apache Subversion will likely not be the best choice.
Also, if you're maintaining an open-source project where outside people will be interacting with your code repository, git is probably a better choice because it's becoming the de-facto standard these days and what most developers are familiar with.
Read full review Beyond Compare is extremely good at the task of comparisons, whether that is text file comparisons or folder comparisons. It does a great job of easily highlighting the differences for users, and giving them the option of merging (in the case of text files) or synchronizing (in the case of folders.) In either case, no one on my team has ever had any reason to reach for another different tool.
Read full review Pros Revision control done properly - you have end to end visibility of all changes in the project. Conflict resolution - visually highlighting the differences helps to track down the problem. Being open source and very popular. We are using SVN hosted in our network - it is very stable, we had almost zero downtime in 4 years. Rollbacks are made simple and easy to use. Read full review Folder diffing. It allows you to see differences in deeply nested folder structures. File diffing. It allows you to see differences in files no matter their complexity. Diffing rules. It allows you to set rules to include/exclude files, folders and lines from your comparison. Read full review Cons Distributed development - I've never worked in an environment where distributed development (developers widely scattered geographically) was a factor, but that's why git exists. Merging - Merging of code from one branch to another can be painful, especially if it's not done frequently. (On the other hand, doing merges is one of the reasons I get a nice salary, so I can't complain too much!) Acceptance - Let's face it, git is what "all the cool kids are using." If you've got a bunch of developers fresh out of school, they'll probably know git and not Subversion. Read full review For date formatting discrepancies the software does not automatically mark the dates as equivalent; for instance ‘2019/10/15’ vs. ‘15-OCT-2019’. This would be considered a difference. The columns/report must be ordered similarly. If extra data is available in one file, it should be removed or extra rows will be marked as differences. For spreadsheet comparison, the user must save the file on the proper tab and then “recompare” within the tool. There is no way to switch between sheets in the software. Read full review Likelihood to Renew While there are interesting alternatives, such a GIT, Subversion has been a breath of fresh air compared to its predecessors like CVS or Microsoft Source Safe (now called Team Foundation Server). Its ease of use and high adoption rate is going to keep me using this product for years to come.
Read full review Usability Again, given the intuitive nature of this program, there is barely any learning curve needed. It is simple, reliable, accurate, and just one of those tools you always have with you and rarely think about until you don't have it. Then it is a case of OMG what was I thinking? This program is just very easy to use, and that makes it more valuable to me than some of my other software tools that cost significantly more.
Read full review Support Rating I have never needed support for this product other than learning how to use a new feature I was not familiar with. User forums and user groups that have used this product for their own purposes have always sufficed for anything that I needed help using with the product. Some of the features could be a little better outlined, but overall very easy to use.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Git has become the new standard of version control, with its support for distributed design. As a tool to manage and control versions, Subversion does it well, but
Git is the future.
Read full review We've tried many:
Code Compare , Meld, UltraCompare, and WinMerge. None of them have the depth of features and speed to handle the work we throw at Beyond Compare. The multi-tabbed interface allows us to sync multiple servers at the same time. It understands multiple file types, metadata, and encodings. It's the best tool for the job.
Read full review Return on Investment Subversion helps us feel secure in maintaining access to all of our product code, both current and historical. Being free and open source makes it an even better "investment". Read full review It's made it quick and easy to compare and synchronize directories when restoring a backup or copying code from one environment to another one. There are times when it would be a painstaking task to manually compare or sync two different directories, but BeyondCompare made it a trivial task. Read full review ScreenShots