I Wonder What This Button Does

This morning, I can happily announce the publication of my latest article, “I Wonder What This Button Does”, in the 220th issue of A List Apart.

The article is a fairly light and non-technical look at my favourite development tool: Subversion. I hope this introduction to revision control inspires a few of you to dive in and try things out in your own projects. I think you’ll be shocked both at how easy it is to get things going in a revision controlled environment, but also at how freeing it is, knowing that you no longer have to worry about irrevocably breaking something.

After reading the article, I hope you’re looking for a little more information about getting started with Subversion. There’s really no better general-purpose resource than “Version Control with Subversion”. It’s got all the information you’ll need to get started, and goes into far more breadth and depth than you’ll probably ever need.

Additionally, I’ve collected a few articles that pinpoint specific pieces of Subversion, detailing methods for tweaking Subversion to meet your needs. Enjoy!

• Working with Subversion File Properties

  Subversion has a very powerful system for associating metadata with the files you have under version control. This article describes how to automate the process of adding properties to the files you put under version control using auto-props.

• Subversion Post-Commit Hooks 101

  Subversion’s system of “hooks” allows you to trigger scripted responses to your interactions with your repositories. This article maps out the “Hello World” of hooks: using SVNnotify to send out e-mails to your project team every time a new revision is committed.

• “Forbidden” Errors and Subversion Commits

  Since Subversion can run over HTTP, it’s easy to cause problems for yourself with wayward mod_rewrite rules. This article notes one such conflict scenario, and provides an easy solution.

• Leveraging mod_rewrite

  Continuing in the mod_rewrite vein, you’ll want to make sure that the hidden directories that Subversion generates aren’t available for general consumption. This article, among other things, shows you how to use mod_rewrite to block requests for those directories that you’d rather the world not see.

• Building Subversion (SVN) on Mac OS X

  Dan Benjamin rocks. This article of his spells out in exacting detail the (simple) process of compiling Subversion from source and installing it on OS X. Why would you do this when you could just grab the binaries? Because it’s fun, that’s why.