This documentation was written to describe the 1.6.x series of Subversion. If you are running a different version of Subversion, you are strongly encouraged to visit http://www.svnbook.com/ and instead consult the version of this documentation appropriate for your version of Subversion.
We covered a number of fundamental Subversion concepts in this chapter:
We introduced the notions of the central repository, the client working copy, and the array of repository revision trees.
We saw some simple examples of how two collaborators can use Subversion to publish and receive changes from one another, using the “copy-modify-merge” model.
We talked a bit about the way Subversion tracks and manages information in a working copy.
At this point, you should have a good idea of how Subversion works in the most general sense. Armed with this knowledge, you should now be ready to move into the next chapter, which is a detailed tour of Subversion's commands and features.