Chapter 1. Fundamental Concepts

Table of Contents

The Repository
Versioning Models
The Problem of File Sharing
The Lock-Modify-Unlock Solution
The Copy-Modify-Merge Solution
Subversion in Action
Subversion Repository URLs
Working Copies
Revisions
How Working Copies Track the Repository
Mixed Revision Working Copies
Updates and commits are separate
Mixed revisions are normal
Mixed revisions are useful
Mixed revisions have limitations
Summary

This chapter is a short, casual introduction to Subversion. If you're new to version control, this chapter is definitely for you. We begin with a discussion of general version control concepts, work our way into the specific ideas behind Subversion, and show some simple examples of Subversion in use.

Even though the examples in this chapter show people sharing collections of program source code, keep in mind that Subversion can manage any sort of file collection—it's not limited to helping computer programmers.