Subversion overview

Subversion (SVN) [wiki] is an excellent version control sytem software. It’s open source and the official website [open] presents, in addition to the source code, the free clients for Windows, MAC OS X, KDE and some IDEs (Eclipse, Netbeans, Visual studio).

Version control (and Backup)

Commonly used in software development, it allows to backup and retrieve our datas maintaing all the versions of all the files (no more overwriting problems). It’s possibile to backup data to a local folder, or to an online space using different network protocols. There are lots of free svn hosting online, google “free svn hosting”.
Read the wikipedia page for more information.

Tutorial for Windows

Following, a brief tutorial to use TortoiseSVN (Windows client) and versioning our files, using an online hosting

• Download, setup TortoiseSVN and restart Windows;
• Register a SVN free account (You can use x-dev, it offers 500Mb space for free), make a new repository and obtain the url;
• Create a temporary folder X:\temp and place the initial data to backup
  Right click on the folder and choose TortoiseSVN->Import
  insert the URL (ex: http://svn2.xp-dev.com/svn/user-projname/
  and user/password when asked (it copies the folders and its contents online) ;
• Create the folder (final path) X:\folder-to-maintain-synchronized
  Right click on the folder, then SVNCheckout (Checkout: FROM online resource TO local folder);
  Choose the above-mentioned url (Tortoise remembers all the urls) and wait for the end. The folder icon should be different (white tick in a green circle over the folder icon) now;
• From now the folder X:\folder-to-maintain-synchronized will magically be kept synchronized, by using two simple Tortoise commands:
  - Right click, SVN Commit.. (copy new files FROM local TO online)
  - Right click, SVN Update (copy FROM online TO local).
  Be careful to use the second command, it’s commonly used when we’ve commited from another folder or another person has done it.
  To maintain the synchronization, delete or move files ONLY USING TortoiseSVN. And add new files added using the command “Add”.

For further information, google “svn tutorial” !
Enjoy