Here at SilenceIT we have developers who work in Windows, Mac (OS X), and Linux (Ubuntu), and most of them prefer to avoid using command-line utilities if possible.  This, combined with the need for a version control system which any group of developers has, put us in an interesting situation.  We needed a system which:

• Had a client that could run in Windows, Mac, and Linux
• Had a GUI for that client for Windows, Mac, and Linux
• Was well-priced or (preferably) open source
• Preferably had integration for Explorer/Finder/Nautilus, since some of our uses would not involve an IDE (such as versioning important documents).

The Better SCM Initiative’s Version Control System Comparison was quite helpful in finding which VCS (and which features) would be most beneficial to us. Naturally, a lot of testing went into making sure the systems would inter-operate without issues and were fairly simple to use (not that this is usually a problem with VCS), as well as how they would handle themselves when things did go wrong. Only one system was popular enough to deliver these hard-to-find features: Subversion, also known as SVN. Although I’d been keen on using another VCS, such as Bazaar or Mercurial, they didn’t quite make the grade in one way another, whether lacking a good GUI or other feature.

Next came the seminar in which I had to explain the terms and tools, all without mentioning the command-line (that last bit being out of choice, mind you). For the terms, I explained what a repository is (the location where all files involved in a project are stored and retrieved), what a working copy is (your private copy of the repository or a project within it), various actions (especially commit – how to update your changes to the repository, which also unlocks all files you have locked), and the usual, but not mandatory, layout of a project. As I did this, I performed a few examples using TurtoiseSVN (By the way, our Mac systems use SCPlugin and I use Nautilus scripts for SVN (though I may use nautilussvn later), not counting our plug-ins for our IDEs).

Other reference material I used or that may be useful:

• Source Control HOWTO by Eric Sink
• The Subversion book