Subversion (also referred to as SVN) is an open-source revision control system. Subversion tracks changes to files and folders, and keeps copies of all revisions, or versions, of your files and folders. Subversion allows you to retrieve at any time older versions of your files and folder. And because subversions keeps copies of all revisions of your files separate from the copy you’re currently working with, there’s an element of a backup system to it. Subversion can work across a network, with more than one user as well, and can help manage the situation where many users may be modifying the same file. Subversion can help manage any conflicts that may arise when more than one users makes changes to the same file.

For this tutorial we are going to start with the basics. We will assume that there is only one user, and we won’t deal with Subversion being used across a network. We are also going to focus on one particular Subversion program, TortoiseSVN. TortoiseSVN is an open-source windows implementation of a Subversion client program.

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