TortoiseSVN is a popular Apache Subversion client for Windows, implemented as a Microsoft Windows shell extension.

TortoiseSVN is GNU General Public License software that you can download for free. It is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows.

Subversion maintains a central database which contains all your version-controlled files with their complete history. This database is referred to as the repository. The repository normally lives on a file server running the Subversion server program, which supplies content to Subversion clients (like TortoiseSVN) on request.

This is where you do your actual work. Every developer has his own working copy, sometimes referred to as a sandbox, on his local PC. You can pull down the latest version from the repository, work on it locally without affecting anyone else, then when you are happy with the changes you made commit them back to the repository.

A Subversion working copy does not contain the history of the project, but it does keep a copy of the files as they exist in the repository before you started making changes. This means that it is easy to check exactly what changes you have made.

The first thing you need to do when using TortoiseSVN, is to download a local working copy of your repository. Start by creating a directory where you will keep the working copy. Right-click on the folder and the Windows Explorer context menu will appear, along with some new TortoiseSVN commands. Select SVN Checkout…'

This will open the checkout dialog:

Where you can add

1. URL of Repository – The URL of the SVN repository you wish to check out.
2. Checkout directory – The location on your local file system where the checkout will occur. By default, it will be the folder you right-clicked in the previous step, but you can change this manually.
3. Checkout depth – This option limits what you check out. This is useful if you're changing just one subdirectory of a very large repository.
4. Revision – This selects the version of the repository you want to check out. You can also select a previous revision, which is useful if you need to roll back to a version before particular changes were made. Or use the HEAD revision for the current working version.

When you've finished with the options, you're ready to finish the checkout. Click Ok.

You should then get an Authentication box where you input your login and password you use for your SVN account. Only leave the Save Authentication checkbox checked if on a private computer!

You'll now see the progress of the checkout. All files and the folders that are included in the checkout will be logged.

At the bottom of the checkout log you'll find the current checked out revision number, the time it took for the checkout to transfer the files, and the size of the data transferred.

Now you have a working copy on your computer; you are free to work on your own, local version of the project. When you have finished making your changes, the modified files/directories will be shown with the red exclamation mark overlay to indicate that they have been modified since they were last checked out or updated.

• Green Checkmark - File/Directory is up to date.
• Red Explanation Mark - File/Directory has been modified.
• Blue Plus Sign - File/Directory is new (Has not been added to repository).
• Yellow Diamond w/Explanation Mark - File/Directory is in a conflicted state.

Occasionally you may get a conflict when you update/merge your files from the repository or when you switch your working copy to a different URL. There are two kinds of conflicts:

File conflicts

• A file conflict occurs if two (or more) developers have changed the same lines of a file.

Tree conflicts

• A tree conflict occurs when a developer moved/renamed/deleted a file or folder, which another developer either also has moved/renamed/deleted or recently modified.