Tuesday 29 March 2011

Book Review: Version Control with Subversion

I just finished reading the online version of the Version Control with Subversion book, which is available for free at the link provided. The book was an incredible help in teaching me the ins and outs of subversion. The only thing I can say that was perhaps not as great as it should have been is that it sometimes went into too much detail, exploring too many of the options and fringe use cases.

While I have managed to set up a repository, make it available over WebDAV and have a Redmine install use it, all without having read this book, this was mostly done by following a recipe. This means that I didn't delve too much into the workings of the software or all of the different configurations that you could have. This area is where this book shines. It tells you how you could have done things differently and the possible reasons for doing so. I personally found several configuration options which I have tweaked on my own Subversion/Apache setup to make it more secure and efficient.

Overall, a good read and while I can't say for sure that everything in this book will be relevant to you, I can say for sure that nearly everyone using Subversion will find something in this book for them.

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