Working with SVN on OS X

2009-01-10 OSX · Software

I use SVN (subversion) quite a bit, even at home to manage my own files, but recently I have been running the beta version for Versions by Sofa and Pico.

It turned into an excellent way of using SVN, being very visual and supporting everything that I needed, but alas the Beta period ran out and they released Versions 1.

Now I was all for buying this application, but the purchase price of 39 Euros totally puts my of. After all this is a nice to have, and only improves my life slightly. It just doesn’t seem worth the price – particularly when most software like this for OS X is about half the price (I would have easily decided to buy it for 20 Euros).

So after deciding whether to hack it, not really an option any more as I like to have all paid for or properly licensed software on my machines, or search for something else I looked back at what I could use.

SVN from the command line. So I started using this again, and I found myself checking in versions of things that are not ready and not having a nice overview of files. It works of course, but it didn’t suit my way of working since using versions – checking in some files, and generally knowing the status of projects that I am working on.

Then I went back to the SVN plugin for Finder. This is ok, but more often than not the rendering of icons showing whether a folder is up to date or not stops working leaving me in the dark.

Then I decided to check out textmate SVN integration. Its ok, but not really good enough, I don’t like the keybindings and the interface is not intuitive enough.

Finally I came across the ProjectPlus plugin for Textmate. After installing just configure it in the preferences to work with what ever source revision system you use (Its supports SVN, Git, Mercurial, Svk & Bazaar), and you can see the state of what you are doing in the system.