If your looking for a web based Subversion repository browser that doesn’t take a rocket scientist to install, you might want to check out WebSVN.

WebSVN is a web based Subversion browser written in the PHP programming language. It took literally minutes to install. All you have to do is untar (or unzip) the installation on your web server, rename the include/distconfig.inc to config.inc and edit the config.inc file per the instructions contained in the module comments to add repositories to browse.

WebSVN supports templates, so its very easy to change the look and feel of your browser. For those used to ViewCVS, it may take a little getting used to, since the UI isn’t as intuitive at first. However, it supports the blame command, which ViewCVS does not.

Back in the beginning of the month I wrote a note to myself about a tool that creates RSS feeds from a Subversion repository. Most of these solutions require setting up post commit hooks to generate the RSS file. You get this functionality free with WebSVN — just click the “XML” button.

I need to play a little more with it, but overall from the 10 minutes I spent with it this morning (including installation), I’m liking it.

To see WebSVN in action, you need look no further than the Debian SVN repository.