What tools do you guys use when integrating with Subversion on Windows?

Question

I'm just getting into Subversion for personal projects and am interested in knowing what tools you use that integrate with Subversion on the Windows platform. Things like visualisation, backup, IDE integration, issue tracking integration etc.

Anything that extends the basic functionality of Subversion really to make it more powerful.

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Great stuff guys, I'm sure there must be plenty more that people use. Please keep contributing!

A quick summary of the tools you guys have been suggesting and some of my own,

Subversion Clients

• Tortoise is the best subversion client in my opinion. The fact that it integrates with Windows Explorer make it a very intuitive tool, and it has the best out of box user experience that I've seen in a subversion client. The built in diff and history tools don't often have me reaching for other clients.
• RapidSVN is pretty good as well if you are looking for something cross platform.
• SVN-Monitor

Subversion Servers

• VisualSVN Server - makes it a snap to set up a subversion server on windows, and it has simple MMC based UI for administration.

IDE Integration

• Ankhsvn is a pretty nice for Visual Studio
• Subclipse is an integration for the Eclipse IDE
• VisualSVN is another popular integration for Visual Studio

Bug Tracking Systems

• FogBugz offers some nice integration with subversion and gives you a post-commit script you can add to your subversion install. I've used this for awhile and really like it.
• Trac has the tightest Subversion integration and work really nicely for both bug tracking and project management.

Visualization

• SVNMapper is a pretty nice tool for visualizing your branches, but I've only used it on occasion. If you project makes extensive use of branches then a tool like this is invaluable.
• WebSVN - Online subversion repositry browser

Merging

• WinMerge - Also my personal favourite merge tool.

Build Management / Continuous Integration

• CruiseControl.NET is a tool to help manage the continuous integration of .NET projects.
• TeamCity is a Continuous Integration and Build Server that connects well to subversion and a host of other things

Hosted Subversion

• Beanstalk
• Unfuddle

Answer 1

We use Ankh and Tortoise.

Answer 2

Tortoise is the classic interface to SVN on windows. It integrates into the Windows shell, so it's just a right-click away to add or checkin a file, or group of files.

It does include some visualisation (showing the structure of the branches and merges). For IDE integration and issue tracking integration, there are other tools, such as add-ins for Eclipse. The repository can also have various 'hooks' setup to perform work beforee/after checkins, such as passing the message you write when you check-in files (you do, don't you?) to a bug-tracker (like Trac) which takes some very simple markup (literally 'ticket:999' or r1234 for a ticket/bug number or revision number) and make them into links and the like.

Answer 3

I have used both AnhkSVN and TortoiseSVN and have to highly suggest using TortoriseSVN for your interaction with your SVN server. Within Tortoise are a few tools that you may use for stats, but really, the biggest things you will use it for is your normal updates and commits, and then merging and branching.

Since you are using this on a "personal" project, I assume you will be the only person in the project, so branching is probably not a concern for you.

There are also a number of tools you may want to look into that integrate with SVN. For example, you may want to automate builds of your code whenever a change is committed to the server. In this case you could setup a Cruise Control server link text that then reads your SVN server every X minutes looking for changes. If a change is found, it does its thing.

I have not used this product, but Trac is a pretty common project management tool to use with SVN: link text

Another SVN provder that has not been listed is Assembla. I have used this and really enjoyed it. However, I already had an Unfuddle account, so I have continued using Unfuddle.

Answer 4

SMARTSVN, TkSVN, Subversion native client, Subclipse.

I personally very much dislike Tortoise because it install a daemon that eats ~10MB in idle mode.

Answer 5

As others have mentioned, Tortoise is great.

Also, for Eclipse integration, I use Subclipse.

Answer 6

I highly suggest Visual SVN. It's pretty cheap and basically extends the functionality of Tortoise into Visual Studio. They both work well together.

Answer 7

If you have other contributors, SVN-Monitor is worth its weight in gold. However, for a single developer, it won't be very useful.

Answer 8

Subversion Clients

• Tortoise is the best subversion client in my opinion. The fact that it integrates with Windows Explorer make it a very intuitive tool, and it has the best out of box user experience that I've seen in a subversion client. The built in diff and history tools don't often have me reaching for other clients.

• RapidSVN is pretty good as well if you are looking for something cross platform.

IDE Integration

• Ankhsvn is a pretty nice for Visual Studio

Bug Tracking Systems

• FogBugz offers some nice integration with subversion and gives you a post-commit script you can add to your subversion install. I've used this for awhile and really like it.

• Trac has the tightest Subversion integration and work really nicely for both bug tracking and project management.

Branch Visualization

• SVNMapper is a pretty nice tool for visualizing your branches, but I've only used it on occasion. If you project makes extensive use of branches then a tool like this is invaluable.

Answer 9

I recommend WinMerge as an alternative diff-viewing application to TortoiseDiff. For a frontend to SVN, TortoiseSVN is a good overall tool, but can slow to a crawl when working with large (many files) projects.

Answer 10

I'm using Subversive integrated in Eclipse.

Answer 11

Ankh plugin for Visual Studio http://ankhsvn.open.collab.net/

Tortoise http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/

Answer 12

Like many others, I use Ankh and TortoiseSVN. However, once I upgraded TortoiseSVN to 1.6.x from 1.5.y, all my files in Visual Studio were marked as "New".

The solution, as I mention in this StackOverflow posting, is to update to a later "daily" build of Ankh. This is because the working copy versions were updated to 1.6, but the latest stable version of Ankh was still compiled for version 1.5. The daily build "recognized" the newer version, and thus the files were marked appropriately.

I have had no problems with the daily build of Ankh that I installed (specific version is AnkhSvn-Daily-2.1.6649.29.msi).

Hope this helps!

Answer 13

I've used both VisualSVN and Ankhsvn and I perfer VisualSVN. I had Ankh crash on me.

Answer 14

I use both Tortoise and Subclipse concurrently. I tend to grab alot of open source libraries from code.google.com and Tortoise makes it a snap to checkout, and even make copies using SVN Checkout. While working with large team projects Subclipse is the way to go if you're working on projects within Eclipse, once your code is checked out you can still use tortoise to run all sorts commands on the SVN, as well as Subclipse commands, without any major issues.

Answer 15

Apart from those already mentioned, I have my SVN install integrated with Mantis, its straightforward, but I did modify my post-commit hook so it tries the regexp in the hook to check whether to update a bug or not (for performance).

I also use Doxygen to build documentation for my code, its triggered from a post-commit hook too. When a directory with the x.doxy config file is committed, that directory is written to a file and a cron runs doxygen on a export of those sources at midnight.

Answer 16

I like the Bitten plugin for Trac. It provides continuous integration support by enabling different tasks to be automatically performed when specified paths inside the repository are updated.

I recently used this with a web-based system I was working on to automatically deploy the most recent version of our prototype to our development server from the repository

Answer 17

There is an interesting Java repository browsing application called Sventon. I have played with this a bit on a test server and like where this is going. There are also some tools available from PushOK for integrating SVN into Delphi and other development environments. I used their SVN proxy in Delphi 7 back in 2006 and it worked reasonably well.

On the file comparison front, BeyondCompare is a good low-cost commercial alternative to built-in Tortoise compare/merge. I have also used WinMerge and give both high marks.

Answer 18

On a sidenote: the diff tool in Tortoise is cool, but a tool I ended up using 3 times a week is BeyondCompare. I use it to see differences between checked out files, great merging flexibility, use it to compare directories, keep a copy of MyDocs on a external hdd up to date, compare text pasted from clipboard etc. I am not affiliated with the company btw, its just the most productive $30 I've ever spent.

Answer 19

Subversive is another Eclipse plugin that is now part of Eclipse incubation.

Answer 20

Redmine is our tool of choice for Bug Tracking Systems here. It's like Trac but multi-scm and multi-project. Lots of nice plugins and generally works well. Wiki, forums, news, task tracking.

Answer 21

Hudson is our build management and continuous integration tool.

Written in java but works seamlessly in windows, installing as a windows service. Good looking and very easy to configure through an intuitive front end. Integrates well with redmine and subversion. A very powerful, very easy to use tool.

Answer 22

Other stuff already's been said, but I may add that Beyond Compare makes a great diff/merge tool. It's not free though.

Answer 23

tortoise + redmine

redmine has excellent subversion support... works like a charm an integrates really nice...

Answer 24

I use Wush.net for basic subversion hosting.

Answer 25

I agree with KSchmidt that winmerge is a good alternative for TortoiseDiff. However, you also mention it as a merge tool, which is strange since winmerge does not do 3-way merge...

I do recommend KDiff3 as an alternative for TortoiseMerge, which I find somewhat counterintuitive (but that may be just me :-))

Answer 26

Any users of AnkhSVN got any comments? VisualSVN is proprietary and reasonably expensive for someone on a budget... Are there really many gains compared to Ankh?

Answer 27

Beyond Compare is an excellent diff program. It's not that expensive and in my opinion it's the best one out there.

Shameless Plug

Sublime is another windows-based SVN server. It's free for personal use but has a license fee for additional users. It's a web-based subversion server that handles repository management, permissions, email notifications, and automated subversion backup.

End Shameless Plug