B. Allen said
This book is both an excellent way to learn Subversion from scratch and an invaluable reference guide to experienced users. The material in this book is on par with (and often better than) the material available in corporate "live, instructor-led" training courses. This book covers everything from the high-level, conceptual view of Subversion to command-line usage details to the low-level internal workings of the Subversion code. Best of all, the book is easy to read and the authors use just the right amount of diagrams and flow charts (enough to clear up any questions, but not so many as to be overwhelming or distracting). I can't imagine working on a Subversion-powered project without this book. Highly recommended
Jaap Spiering said
When I came across this book, we were actually in the middle of a transition from CVS to Subversion, so this book obviously came in handy (it even has an appendix which describes differences between the two). Even though I wasn't personally in charge of the transition, it provided me enough information to know exactly what was going on - and more. The style of the book is very well readable, and its structure is built up logically. The book starts out with fundamental concepts and basic usage - enough for everyday use as a developer. Chapter 3 discusses more advanced topics, most of which were new to me. I must say that this part is most useful as a reference, rather than simply reading it, as the subject is quite technical and you will want to actually get your hands on Subversion.
The rest of the book covers branching, merging, administration and configuration, basically any topic you can think of when it comes to version control. At least, I can't think of anything that has been left out. On top of that, Chapter 9 contains a complete reference to using Subversion. I will definitely be using this book as I get to work with Subversion more often and it provides valuable information for any developer working on a Subversion project.
In short: An excellent and very useful technical book. Want to give it either 4 or 5 stars. I hardly ever would give out 5 stars but I haven't really seen any disadvantages besides it being a bit too technical to read in bed at night.
Marten K said
While a beginner, I have been programming for a little while now and the time came for me to put my code into a repository. I was dreading it.
"version control with subversion" gently and quickly took me into using Subversion. I needed to read the first few chapters twice, after that I downloaded and installed the code, and viola, my code is version controlled with minimal effort.
Subversion linked readily with my IDE, Netbeans, although subversion with different IDEs is not really covered in this book.
Thanks to this book, I did not have take my mind of my main project for long.
I read the rest of the book (skim reading some sections) and it provides clear instructions on other possibilities, and how to set up more complex and tailored systems.
A good read, presenting good knowledge, and good instruction.
My evidence is that I am now using Subversion well, whereas two weeks ago I had no clue.
Todd Fischer said
I have been using CVS and SVN for more than 10 years. The enhanced merge feature in SVN 1.5 is a much needed capability. This book does a good job of describing branching and merging, what is really happening in SVN, and how to use SVN properly to meet our branching needs. That said, if you are doing multi-site, mostly independent multi-developer software development and haven't implemented a SCM system, I suggest you use GIT.
Juergen Kahrs said
This book is the official manual (2nd edition in English) for Subversion 1.5. You can also read it online, but I like the printed edition in O'Reilly quality. Translations into other languages are available on the Internet, and some (like German) are also available in printed form.
After years of using CVS as a versioning system, I had to switch over to Subversion. It is commonplace to say that CVS users will easily switch over to Subversion and that is true. The basic commands are identical and I had no problems as a user of Subversion. But if you need to work with branches and tags; if you need to do merges, set up a new repository or even migrate a repository, then you will notice that Subversion is very much different from CVS. At that point, I started reading the Subversion manual and it answered all my questions.
Some time later, I helped a colleague in administrating large repositories and the book was useful again. We had to move a repository (many GigaBytes) from one server and integrate it into another repository on a different server. I looked up the answers to some questions in the book and migration was successful.
So, I can really recommend this book. It is inexpensive, good printing quality and useful in daily work.
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