Subversion is a popular free revision control system. A revision control system lets you keep track of new versions of a file, to track changes and to revert back to earlier versions.

Using a revision control system has many advantages:

• Projects with many authors can be “shared” and worked on by several authors simultaneously.
• When there are many users of a project, they can easily access the latest version.
• The full revision history of a document is stored. That way all changes can be tracked and old revisions can be recovered.
• The project is stored in a single location, thus avoiding scattering different versions on different machines. Also, the project is accessible from anywhere where there is internet.

Ecolego allows users to checkout projects and commit projects directly from the File menu.

Before the Subversion functionality can be used you must set up the Subversion repository connection.

To put a project under version control means that you register it with a Subversion repository and submit it’s data to the repository server. This is equivalent of the file system “Save As” operation.

1. Open the project
2. Make sure that the connection settings are set for the repository you wish to use.
3. Select File | Subversion | Commit project from the file menu. You will be asked if you want to add it to the repository.
4. Select a folder in the Repository file system.
5. Click Ok.
6. Enter a comment if you wish, and press Ok.

Once a project has been registered with a Subversion repository, information about the Subversion repository is stored in the project. After the initial commit (“Save As”), every subsequent commit corresponds to the file system “Save” operation.

That means that the second time you commit a project you will not be prompted for a location in the repository.

Every time you commit to the repository it is highly recommended that you write a comment (when prompted) that describes the changes you have made to the project. This will help others that work on the same project see what has been changed and will also help you if you need to backtrack to an earlier version.

To checkout a project corresponds to the file system “Open” operation.

1. Select File | Subversion | Checkout from the main menu.
2. A window appears which displays the different folders of the Subversion repository. Browse to the project file you wish to checkout and click Ok.

Underneath the Repository file system tree there is a list named History. When you select a project file in the repository, every earlier version of the project is listed here. Select the version that you wish to checkout from this list and click Ok.

• Setting up a Subversion repository
• Checkout a project
• Commit a project

• Subversion
• Turtoise SVN