While looking up some svn commands, I recently stumbled upon this free book. After skimming over it one cloudy Sunday afternoon, I’d say it’s a really nice introduction. I especially recommend it to Subversion users who didn’t consider it necessary to read any documentations on Subversion – just like me. After reading the book I gained a lot of confidence using SVN, not being afraid to break something any more.

The book was written by members of the Subversion development team and focusses on the command line usage of SVN on unix. It’s style is enjoably matter-of-factly, but never boring.

The most useful parts for the common svn user are the chapters “Basic Usage” and “Branching and Merging”. Those show the typical Subversion work cycles illustrated by real life examples and dwelling on common accidents and their solutions:

How to undo a change that was already commited?
How can I resurrect deleted files?
How to handle release or feature branches?

Explanations on what happens “behind the scene”, instructions for administrators and a complete reference round off the book.