Before starting

In this first part of the chapter, we will take a look at best practices to maintain safety and work on actual SVN repository with no hassles.

Bear in mind that the purpose of this chapter is only to give readers some hints; dealing with big and complex repositories deserves a more prudent and articulated approach.

Installing a Subversion client

To be able to do these experiments, you need a Subversion tool; on Windows, the most widely used is the well-known TortoiseSVN (http://tortoisesvn.net), which provides command-line tools to both GUI and shell integration.

I recommend a full installation of TortoiseSVN, including command-line tools, as we'll need some of them to make experiments.

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