SVN! the best open version control ever!
March 24, 2017
SVN! the best open version control ever!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Apache Subversion
I have used apache subversion for a course that I have taken and also for a company that I intern for. It is used for collaborating projects with team members. At the university level, apache subversion is a mandatory version control [solution] to be used in many courses and an option in many other courses in the fields related to computers. At an organizational level, at the company that I currently intern for, apache subversion is used by the whole software department over 3 different countries to collaborate over the huge project we are working on. Apache Subversion is a simple tool used to keep all the people working on a project on the same page by letting everybody work on the same project at the same time.
- Old is gold. Apache Subversion has existed before many other version control systems, including Git. It's old, stable, and easy to use with not many complications.
- Excellent versioning system. You can jump between any particular version of your project to any other version just by reverting or updating, you can also create patches of your own changes and then apply the patch on your own system on a different check out or on someone else's computer who has a checkout copy.
- You can search for any older commit by using words used in the comment log or by using an exact commit number or anything in between. You can also check the log of each and every individual file instead of the whole checkout.
- Tortoise SVN is a client for Apache Subversion. It has one of the best UIs I have ever seen for a version control system.
- Merge conflicts is one area where I think that Apace Subversion can improve a lot in. Where there is a single file being edited by two different people and the person who tries to update after someone before him commits with changes on the same file then Subversion tries to merge the changes and create an ideal file but fails miserably.
- Any file renames or deletion or additions have to be specifically made through Apache Subversion or has to be notified to Apache Subversion in a round about fashion or it will be disregarded while committing the changes. While this is reasonable, it is quite annoying until a user gets used to it.
- Faster on Linux and slower on Windows. Apache Subversion can be improved by increasing its checkout, update and commit speeds on Windows.
- I cannot speak on ROI but Apache Subversion is definitely the best version control tool for a project of any size. It serves the user's purpose in a complete satisfactory way.
- As it is open source, there is no need to spend any amount on it, which makes it an even more easier choice.
- The most negative impact Apache Subversion can have on you is that you will not want to use any other version control tool after using it.
Git is a newer version control system compared to that of svn. I think that svn is more stable, easy to learn/use, and not-so-complex as Git. Also, svn has very good client applications which provide extremely user-friendly user interfaces. Apache Subversion is also open source which makes it an even more eligible to use as there is no investment at all.