Free + work out of the box + ease of use this is the hard equation that I always try to solve in my work and Subversion ( SVN ) solves it for me .

I used to work alone in many projects I worked as analyst, developer, tester and some times the user :) , I always used to keep copy of my work files in other location like flash drive , external HD or on my Email or my web hosting . I do this nearly every day so I can continue working from home or while traveling … also this helped me to keep history of my code as some time new modifications makes thing worst and when this happen and I found that I have the previous version I take my breath and say thanks God :)

Now I am working in many many projects and responsible for whole IT department , the big problem I faced is that I need to maintain history of our code and documents and make this systematic . while I already know about MS Source Safe and the new product Team System I decide to make my search around the Internet to make the right decision and it was easy Subversion is my needed answer because I want something free and works out of the box with Visual Studio ( 2008 , 2010 ) and also support any document visioning not just the code file .

What I have done to setup my SVN server and clients ?

First , I downloaded Visual SVN Server ( SVN Server for Windows ) and install it on my server ( this can be your local machine ) and created my first repository

Second , I downloaded TortoiseSVN ( to work with SVN from you windows explorer ) and ankhsvn ( plugin for MS Visual Studio )

after installing TortoiseSVN this menu appear when I right click in any explorer window ( from this menu you can browse your repository and make check-in/Out so easily for any folder )

while after installing Ankhsvn you can make this directly from Visual Studio

I really loved SVN so far , it solve my equation ( Free + work out of the box + ease of use )