Modelo factores determinantes de la creación de spin-off

As a client user, the Subversion command-linesvnprogram provides you with all of the tools that you need to interact with a Subversion repository. The command line is not always the most effective way to use Subversion though. If you program in an integrated development environment (IDE), for example, it is helpful to be able to perform all of your updates, commits, and other SVN commands from within the framework of the IDE. A GUI can also be useful if you use SVN too infrequently to learn the command-line tools effectively (or if you just don’t have the time necessary to learn). Sometimes, other tools are also necessary because you don’t have access to the command-line tool.

Subversion has a library of functions that programmers can use to develop new tools to interact with repositories, which makes the creation of tools beyond thesvncommand much easier than it is with many other version control systems. Accordingly, many very good integration tools have already been developed. In fact, so many have been developed that discussing them all here would be impossible. Instead, this chapter will give you an overview of several of the tools that are out there, which will give you a basis for finding and learning about the use of other tools.

8.1

Accessing SVN through a GUI Client

Most modern desktop or workstation operating systems depend heavily on the use of a graphical user interface (GUI) for interaction with the system—so much so that in many cases, the command line is a dying art. With such heavy dependence on a GUI, it only makes sense that it will often be easier to interact with Subversion through the use of a GUI-based tool. Fortunately, there are a number of GUI clients for Subversion, available for Windows, Mac OS X, and other more traditional UNIX-based systems.

8.1.1

RapidSVN

Whatever your platform of choice, the odds are that you can use the RapidSVN GUI client for Subversion. Although RapidSVN is a natively compiled application (and thus runs with the speed you would expect from a native application), it was written in a very portable manner, which allows it to compile and run on most major platforms.

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106 Chapter 8 Integrating with Other Tools

RapidSVN works as a complete standalone client for Subversion, and presents the user with a straightforward, easy-to-use interface, which users of WinCVS will find familiar. It can be downloaded from the project’s Web site, atrapidsvn.tigris.org. Compiled binary installations are available as packages for some Linux distributions, and there is an installer for Windows. RapidSVN will run on a number of other platforms (such as Mac OS X and Solaris), but you may have to compile the program from source code.

Features

RapidSVN is a full-featured Subversion client interface, with access to most of the Sub- version client commands. Repositories and working copies are presented in a three-paned interface, as you can see in Figure 8.1. The top-left pane shows a tree view of all of the repositories and working copies that you currently have “bookmarked” in RapidSVN. In the top-right pane, you can see details about each of the files in the directory that is se- lected in the tree view. Finally, the bottom pane is used for status output from the running of commands.

RapidSVN shows the status of individual files through both the icon that is used to display the file and a textual representation in the “Status” column. For example, modified files are shown with a red file icon (with an M).

To perform a command on a file, you generally just have to select it and then select the command you would like to perform, either from the toolbar or a menu. If other options are required (such as a revision number), RapidSVN displays a dialog box for you to enter

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them. So, as an example, if you have a modified file that you would like to commit, you can select it in the file detail pane and click on the Commit Selected button on the toolbar. RapidSVN pops up a dialog for you to enter the log message, and away you go.

When you use RapidSVN to run Subversion commands, you do not always have access to all of the options available from the command line, such as the merge command, which does not give you the option of performing a dry run that shows which files will change without changing them, as you can do withsvn merge. Furthermore, RapidSVN makes some complex operations more difficult, or even impossible. Log messages, for instance, cannot be queried recursively—nor is there a way for binary files to be added to a file as properties. With many commands, it is also not possible to run the command simultane- ously on a group of files.