Dressing Subversion: ViewVC and SVN-Searcher

Abstract

Subversion, a mainstream, free and open-source version control system, is now used in many companies. It is, by now, the triumph of evolution of the centralized version control systems. However, the great part of its potential is often left undiscovered. Whereas Subversion is thought of as a “some tool for programmers” and is used only for storing source code and only to provide concurrent work on it, it's impossible to effectively search across the repository (even not speaking of searching across the history) or get answer to questions like “why these changes were made?” using Subversion's assistance. The means of Web-navigation across repositories, files and revisions are also very poor; for example, nobody can perform passive monitoring of repository using some kind of subscriptions (for example, to changes of critical files). In fact, due to these reasons, the Subversion repository knocks off the corporate knowledge base, and its features are not used by the “not-programmers” (HR, marketing and other infrastructure departments) for example, for storing documents. We propose using two free and open-source systems — ViewVC and SVNSearcher — to fill these gaps and freely turn your SVN repositories into a part of corporate knowledge base with effective search, Web navigation and RSS subscriptions.