8 April 2008, 19:07 in

Using Subversion to manage documents

There are various documents that I frequently want to access or modify from various computers, such as home or work or a friend’s house. Previously what I would do is either email files to myself, or copy them back and forth via USB flash drives. This is time consuming, insecure, and error prone (to get mixed up about which copy of a file is the most recent one). As a better solution, I decided to use a Subversion repository.

Subversion is a version control system, typically used by programmers to manage their source code, but it can be used to store all manner of things (in this case mainly Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and plain text files). The normal Subversion client is a command line utility, but various graphical user interfaces are available; I use TortoiseSVN which conveniently integrates into Windows Explorer.

Using Subversion to manage my documents has several benefits. I can now access my files over the internet from any computer (provided that it has a Subversion client such as TortoiseSVN installed which is quick, easy, and free). Subversion maintains a full history of changes to the repository, so it is possible to go back and find that bit of info you deleted the other day, or figure out at what point you changed a certain sentence in a file. The files are safely backed up on a remote server, so even if my computer dies I haven’t lost them. Finally, committing changes to the repository or getting the latest changes from the repository literally takes seconds to initiate; less clicks / keystrokes / fumbling is required compared to copying files to a USB drive or emailing them. Love it.

  1. get with the times phil! we’ve been using svn and tortoise for ages! :P


    — tone    Apr 8, 09:20 pm    #

  2. Yes I’ve been using Subversion for source code for ages too. I’ve only recently started using it for my documents though, despite it being a pretty obvious application.


    — Phil    Apr 8, 09:44 pm    #
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