TortoiseSVN

Some of my co-workers dislike using the command-line to access Subversion repositories. For those running Windows, TortoiseSVN is looking good.

Once it's installed, subversion operations become available from the context menu of Windows Explorer. Checkouts, commits, configuration of TortoiseSVN, it's all right there.

When you're browsing a local checkout of an SVN repository, document icons are decorated with green checkmarks, red exclamation marks, etc. to show whether they are in sync with the repository, whether you have made local modifications, etc.

So far the only problem I've had with TortoiseSVN has been in figuring out how to do a checkout from a read-write repository. There may be better ways of solving the problem, but here's what has worked for me.

First, use svn+ssh to access the repository. In the URL, specify your username on the subversion host. And of course this means you need to use the absolute path to the repository in the URL:

svn+ssh://my_username@my_svn_server/abs_path_to_repository/my_project/trunk

Next, modify the TortoiseSVN settings to enable ssh tunneling. I'm not sure this is really necessary. But I did make the change, via the "Edit" button next to the "Subversion configuration file" label. Once notepad popped up with the contents of the config file, I uncommented the lines for ssh tunneling:

[tunnels]
ssh = $SVN_SSH ssh