Surfing around this morning I found a podcast that talks about Subversion. I’m in agreement with all of the points he makes in this podcast. As anyone who reads this site somewhat regularly would know, I am a big Subversion fan since the early pre-release days. It was cool to listen to someone who gets as excited about this product as I do.

An outline of some of the things talked about:

• Challenges encountered in using CVS with Java
• Early Adoption – Version 0.18
• The Subversion Teams’ Process Maturity
• API and database format compatibility commitment
• Compatibility between clients and server versions of software
• Recommendation of the Pragmatic Version Control with Subversion
• Quick description of TortoiseSVN
• Subclipse Eclipse Plugin – discussion of features
• Reasoning behind running Subversion on the Apache Webserver
• Integration with Apache Authentication Modules (specific example was integration with ActiveDirectory)
• ViewCVS – Repository Viewer
• Tool set growing around Subversion

While this podcast focuses explicitly on the Subversion tool and ViewCVS module, there are a number of other tools that you can use in your environment to lower your cost and increase your productivity, such as CruiseControl.

In a recent study I performed on my development groups process improvement over the past 5 years, we found that we had cut the cost of managing our build and release process by approximately 92% by incorporating Subversion and related tools like CruiseControl, ViewCVS, and other custom software (and major process changes that accompany them) to integrate and automate our release management processes. This savings does not include the reduction in licensing costs that come with using Open Source Software in lieu of proprietary software. They are time and people costs only. Now, this has been our experience. Your individual mileage may vary.

If you’re looking for a new version control tool, this podcast could be a source of information that can help you in your decision.

Check it out.