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TortoiseSVN – Graphical User Interface for Windows to (Sub)version Control

Recently I have chance to play with SVN when I need to submit a my Blogtal Trackback Wordpress Plugin into Wordpress plugin's repository. Wordpress plugin repository uses SVN to control the files and their versions hosted in the server. It allows anyone to check out a copy of your plugin files onto their local machine, but, as a plugin author, only you have tho authority to check in.

Instead of typing commands to check in, check out, or whatever to the files to the repository, I found a good software for Windows so that I can execute all SVN commands simply by clicks or drag and drop.

You can find the download here at TortoiseSVN download.

TortoiseSVN is free and really simple to use. It provides a nice and easy user interface for Subversion. Here are some of the Tortoise's features:

• Most current CVS features.
• Directories, renames, and file meta-data are versioned.
• Commits are truly atomic.
• Branching and tagging are cheap (constant time) operations.
• Efficient handling of binary files.

This is how I submit my files to Wordpress Plugin using Tortoise compares to using commands:

Commands

$ mkdir my-local-dir
$ svn co http://svn.wp-plugins.org/your-plugin-name my-local-dir
$ cd my-local-dir/
my-local-dir/$ cp ~/my-plugin.php trunk/my-plugin.php
my-local-dir/$ cp ~/readme.txt trunk/readme.txt
my-local-dir/$ svn add trunk/*
my-local-dir/$ svn ci -m 'Adding first version of my plugin'
my-local-dir/$ svn cp trunk tags/1.0
my-local-dir/$ svn ci -m "tagging version 1.0"

Windows and TortoiseSVN

• At my C drive, right click mouse to create a folder and name it as my-local-dir.
• Right click on the folder, select "SVN Checkout" on the menu and key in http://svn.wp-plugins.org/your-plugin-name for the URL of repository, click Ok.
• Double click the created folder.
• Use copy and paste method to copy my plugin files into the folder.
• At the folder, right click and select "TortoiseSVN > Add..." and click Ok.
• At the folder, right click and select "SVN Commit" and click Ok. Type in comment, username and password when prompt.
• At the folder, right click and select "TortoiseSVN > Repo browser", use drag and drop method or copy and paste to copy the desire files to the destination (in this case create a folder call 1.0 in tags too). Click Ok.
• At the folder, right click and select "SVN Commit" and click Ok. Type in comment, username and password when prompt.

I know, sometimes, for programmers, it is much easy and convenience to use commands method. But for normal user, none technical people, a GUI, copy and paste, and drag and drop methods will be much better for them.

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