SVN for Managing Code

I just configured subversion (SVN) in a new machine to help me manage all code I write. I had being toying with the idea for a while, but finally with the excuse of having to prepare a presentation about version control systems for the University, I wanted to practice installing, configuring, and accessing projects.

Today, I finally set up a server that integrates SVN with Apache. This was very simple, just type apt-get install subversion apache2 libapache2-svn in Ubuntu, tweak a configuration file, and we’re done.

The advantage of using SVN is that it allows me to access my projects from any machine, edit them there and upload the changes to the repository, from where I can download them again on my main machine. SVN also allows accessing older versions of files (or “revisions” as they call them), access historical checkouts, full projects, and of course, share code with other people without having to manually move files and manually merging changes afterwards.

Learning how to manage and work with the repository might seem complicated at first, but it’s really not that difficult and there is an excellent free book making the rounds.

If you haven’t tried it, I really recommend it. It can help avoid some headaches.

Happy coding.-