There are many version control programs out there. But I think Subversion recently has become the first choice for programmers. It is easy to install, easy to use and most importantly, it is free.
When it comes to client programs, there are many choices out there. I played with several client programs and I want to share my experience with you.
Note that the platforms I use are Windows XP and Linux (Centos 5). Why do I use Centos? That’s another article for another time.
On Windows platforms, the first and best choice is TortoiseSVN. There may be other nice programs out there, but TortoiseSVN is open source and that make it the top choice (at least for me!)
On Centos, it was whole a different story.
esvn: First I started to test esvn. After several requirements like Qt Library, still there are compilation errors! There was no troubleshooting for compile process and I had no luck fixing the errors. So I gave up on it.
qsvn: (Web site) This was needed Qt4. I installed it. After that the readme file says use cmake command to compile from source. cmake is not included in Centos Yum library. I tried to install it, but no luck in that part as well! Although in KDE you can easily install qsvn, but I don’t use KDE. If you use it, let me know how it worked out.
rapidsvn: This one was the first client program I could successfully install on Centos without any errors. “Successful compile” looked promising. But when I start using it, the GUI was awful. It didn’t take me long to decide that rapissvn is not a good choice yet. We should wait for newer versions and see how it works out.
SmartSVN: This free Subversion client program is java based and definitely the best choice for me. The GUI was great and installation was straight forward without any errors. Check out its web site . I’m using SmartSVN for a while and I think this is the best choice (Free) for a svn client program on Centos.
Note that if you are using Eclipse in Centos (or other Linux distributions), the Subclipse plugin is the best choice for you.
Most of you who use Subversion, also want to use a web based access to make it easy for users to see the repositories. This list is summary of my experience:
- sventon, a read only java based web access. Easy to setup and easy to use.
- SvnWebClient from Polarion is java based web application with some write features, like delete, create branches and so on. But it has a big problem in authentication. The only situation you could easily use svnwebclient is when you have an open repository without any kind of security. For the rest? forget it!
- Chora which is one of Horde projects is a nice choice. Especially when you plan to use other Horde features for your development environment.
