This text is a work in progress—highly subject to change—and may not accurately describe any released version of the Apache™ Subversion® software. Bookmarking or otherwise referring others to this page is probably not such a smart idea. Please visit http://www.svnbook.com/ for stable versions of this book.

Organization of This Book

The chapters that follow and their contents are listed here:

Chapter 1, Fundamental Concepts

Explains the basics of version control and different versioning models, along with Subversion's repository, working copies, and revisions.

Chapter 2, Basic Usage

Walks you through a day in the life of a Subversion user. It demonstrates how to use a Subversion client to obtain, modify, and commit data.

Chapter 3, Advanced Topics

Covers more complex features that regular users will eventually come into contact with, such as versioned metadata, file locking, and peg revisions.

Chapter 4, Branching and Merging

Discusses branches, merges, and tagging, including best practices for branching and merging, common use cases, how to undo changes, and how to easily swing from one branch to the next.

Chapter 5, Repository Administration

Describes the basics of the Subversion repository, how to create, configure, and maintain a repository, and the tools you can use to do all of this.

Chapter 6, Server Configuration

Explains how to configure your Subversion server and offers different ways to access your repository: HTTP, the svn protocol, and local disk access. It also covers the details of authentication, authorization and anonymous access.

Chapter 7, Customizing Your Subversion Experience

Explores the Subversion client configuration files, the handling of internationalized text, and how to make external tools cooperate with Subversion.

Chapter 8, Embedding Subversion

Describes the internals of Subversion, the Subversion filesystem, and the working copy administrative areas from a programmer's point of view. It also demonstrates how to use the public APIs to write a program that uses Subversion.

Part II, “Subversion Command Reference”

Explains in great detail every subcommand of svn, svnadmin, and svnlook with plenty of examples for the whole family!

Appendix A, Subversion Quick-Start Guide

For the impatient, a whirlwind explanation of how to install Subversion and start using it immediately. You have been warned.

Appendix B, Subversion for CVS Users

Covers the similarities and differences between Subversion and CVS, with numerous suggestions on how to break all the bad habits you picked up from years of using CVS. Included are descriptions of Subversion revision numbers, versioned directories, offline operations, update versus status, branches, tags, metadata, conflict resolution, and authentication.

Appendix C, WebDAV and Autoversioning

Describes the details of WebDAV and DeltaV and how you can configure your Subversion repository to be mounted read/write as a DAV share.

Appendix E, Copyright

A copy of the Creative Commons Attribution License, under which this book is licensed.