Man oh man, today is a day I will never forget, the day I learned to use Subversion.

Subversion is a server-side piece of software you use to do version control on your documents. It’s particularly useful in situations where more than one person will be editing those documents. You edit your files locally and then commit those changes to a server, at which point someone else is able to safely check them out again, edit away and then upload their versions over yours. The important thing to note: older versions are always still accessible.

Why am I so excited about this? Well, I have been doing web development for just over 10 years now and I’ve always had a desktop and laptop machine to do that work from. Two machines, and usually at least two copies of files, not to mention the backups of those files ... after a while you end up with at best, an “organized” mess.

Enter Subversion ...

I use Eclipse to do most of my coding in, and as it turns out, there is a plugin for Eclipse called Subclipse (walkthrough) ...  that acts as a VERY NICE front end to Subversion. Subclipse is almost completely transparent, the main features are embedded into contextual menus within the Eclipse program.

How does this change things for me? I’m now able to store all of my own development files, and java course files on a remote Subversion server, and then I use eclipse as I did before to edit those files freely. I now have the extra step of uploading changes and downloaded the newest version when its appropriate, but gone are the days of wondering what version I am working on, and if its current.

Life just got a whole lot easier ... Here’s a screenshot of Eclipse by the way.