This documentation was written to describe the 1.7.x series of Apache™ 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.

Summary

One of Subversion's greatest features isn't something you get from running its command-line client or other tools. It's the fact that Subversion was designed modularly and provides a stable, public API so that others—like yourself, perhaps—can write custom software that drives Subversion's core logic.

In this chapter, we took a closer look at Subversion's architecture, examining its logical layers and describing that public API, the very same API that Subversion's own layers use to communicate with each other. Many developers have found interesting uses for the Subversion API, from simple repository hook scripts, to integrations between Subversion and some other application, to completely different version control systems. What unique itch will you scratch with it?