The Standard in Open Source Version Control

Version Control with

Subversion

Introduction

This is the home of Version Control with Subversion, a free book about the ubiquitous Apache™ Subversion® version control system and written by some of the developers of Subversion itself.

As you may have guessed from the layout of this page, we are quite pleased that some versions of this book have been published by O'Reilly Media. You can certainly buy a traditionally published print copy of the book if you'd like to, but you'll always find the most recent versions here on this site, available in both HTML and PDF formats.

Online Versions of the Book

Versions of this book use a numbering system designed to match those used by the Subversion software itself—version 1.7 of Version Control with Subversion covers Subversion 1.7, for example. Here are the latest versions of the book which are available online:

For Subversion 1.7

Nightly Build (for Subversion 1.8)

Please bear in mind that these versions are works-in-progress: if you bookmark or link to specific sections, those links may be invalidated by continuing development. If you need a link that can be reasonably expected to remain stable for years to come, link to one of the completed editions above.

You can also find older versions of the book (which we suspect are no longer of much interest to most folks) here.

Feedback/Contributing

For feedback on the book or this website, contact svnbook-dev@red-bean.com [listinfo]. If you have spotted errors in the book (O'Reilly's hardcopy or otherwise), please do the following things:

  1. Check our issue/ticket tracker to see if someone else has already reported the same problem. If so, there's nothing else to do, unless you wish to contribute a patch which fixes the problem (see below).
  2. Check the XML sources to see if the problem still exists. You can grab these using Subversion itself, by checking out the trunk of our Subversion repository at https://svn.code.sf.net/p/svnbook/source/trunk/. If the problem is present in the latest book sources, please report the problem to the mailing list above or file a new ticket.
  3. If the problem is in the published second edition book, check O'Reilly's errata page for the book, and report the error there if it hasn't already been reported.

Reports of errors in the book are always welcome. Reports of errors in the book which are accompanied by a suggested fix for the problem are even better. For technical fixes (spelling, grammar, markup, etc.), just include with your error-reporting email a patch against the XML sources (and include the word [PATCH] in the subject line). For more subjective concerns about the tone or comprehensibility of a passage, it's best just raise that topic on the mailing list.

Translations

This book has been (or is being) translated to other languages. Use the navigation menu at the bottom of the page to select a different language. From each translated page you can get instructions on obtaining the translated book (or a work-in-progress snapshot if it is not finished yet). Note that the English version is the master from which all translations derive, and if you have any comments about a translation you should contact that translation's authors.

Are Those Turtles?

Why, yes, they are, indeed, turtles. That's the animal chosen by the publisher for our book cover. And before you ask us, "Why?" — we don't really know. It's cool, and our wives are pleased that at least something "icky" wasn't chosen to represent Subversion.

Ben Collins-Sussman,
Brian W. Fitzpatrick & C. Michael Pilato