Learning svn client?

[anderszvensson]

Hi,

I was wondering if you have any suggestions for how to learn the svn client (and svn in general) better? At my company we feel a need for some sort of course or tutorial, as the user guide doesn't seem enough.

For example, we have run into what should be one of the basic functions of Subversion, resolving conflicts, and was not able to find out how to do it in the user guide... We knew that the version from the repository was the version we wanted to save, so we simply wanted the conflict to be resolved by replacing the local copy with the one updated from the repository, but couldn't find any way to do it.

Do you have some sort of tutorial or perhaps a webcast or something? I know there are tutorials about subversion in general on the web, but it's specifically how to use it in the Oxygen svn client that we need.

Any tips?

Regards,

Anders

[florin]

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us.

I would recommend you to start learning how Subversion works by reading the SVN Book. It is the official manual of Subversion, so you can find information from the source. It is updated continuously and it is available in HTML and PDF formats, for free. You can find it at:
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/

It is not a big book and it describes the work flow of using Subversion in every day job. Also, it is not hard to understand the concepts described.

In Syncro SVN Client, almost every Subversion command has a corresponding action in our working copy. For the repository, we don't support administrative commands, only usual commands for browsing, creating folders, branches and tags, history, etc.

Obviously, using the command line is one thing and using the same action from Syncro SVN Client and getting used with the GUI is another thing, but most of our users said that, after a couple of days, it is intuitive enough to learn how every thing works. Also, there are some differences regarding the supported options for some commands (we don't support every possible option of a Subversion command).

About resolving a conflict, Subversion has 3 types of conflicts:

• file content conflicts
• directory structure conflicts
• properties conflicts

Syncro SVN Client presents these conflict states in the local file/properties state columns, but there are some "meta" markers for each resource which divide the above conflicts in 2 categories:

• real conflicts - the resources which have content or properties in conflict and need to be resolved. These resources are presented with a red C in the lower-right corner of the corresponding file icon;
• pseudo-conflicts - the resources which are modified in the working copy and in the repository at the same time, but they are not in a real conflicting state yet (but an update may result in such a state). These resources are marked with a red double-headed arrow over the corresponding file icon.

There are many possibilities to resolve/work around a conflict. The most usual one is to resolve it, thus using Mark Resolve in Syncro SVN Client (after you manually edited the file content and kept what presents interest for you). Other way is to Override and Update the conflicted resources, which will drop all your changes and update the selected files to the repository version. A simple revert can also get rid of the conflicted state, but will leave the resources as they were in the pristine version, so you will have to update them manually. There are many situations for which you can use multiple Subversion actions to resolve or avoid them, but this will become more clear in time, using Subversion and after experiencing different situations.

If you have any problems in using our product or you need assistance in some way, do not hesitate to contact us and we will gladly help you. For any Subversion related problem, it would be better to write us using the following e-mail address: support@syncrosvnclient.com

Best regards,
Florin Avram
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Syncro SVN Client Team