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4 Unusual uses for Subversion

·267 words·2 mins· ·
General Features Subversion
Ariejan de Vroom
Author
Ariejan de Vroom
Jack of all Trades, Professional Software Craftsman

The most common use of Subversion is to keep source code of applications versioned and secure. However, there are quite a few other options that are not so common at all.

Quickly read on and find out if maybe you can put Subversion to use in quite a few ways you didn’t expect.

1. CMS

Maybe CMS is a bit strong, but it’s very easy to develop a static website locally and store it in Subversion. You just checkout your website on your production server and you’re good to go. You can easily jump back to previous content and you always have a backup around.

2. Todo list / Notes

You can version a list of text files as todo items or notes. You can check it out anywhere you want and keep track of all your past notes and items. You will have to establish some sort of formatting convention for yourself as how you name files and all that.

3. Backups

Put your entire home directory in Subversion. You’ll always have a backup handy and you can easily jump back in time! Maybe it’s not as sophisticated as Mac OS X Leopard’s Time Machine, but it serves its purpose.

4. Community Story Writing

It’s a bit like coding. You could use Subversion to write a story (or manuscript or book or …) as a community. It’s a bit like a wiki, but you can all use your favourite editors. You’ll have to agree on an ASCII based file format, though.

Maybe you know some very cool way to use Subversion as well? Please comment below!

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