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How to install Visual SVN

July 2, 2009 11:26

Introduction

I'm a long time user of—cough, cough—Visual SourceSafe, both at work and home. At home it's done pretty well. At work, with dozens of users, not so much. We're solving the problem at work by migrating to Microsoft Team Foundation Server. This has prompted me to think about my home/personal solution for source control. While I could continue to use VSS, I thought it was time to take a look at Subversion, which I'd heard a lot of good things about. Subversion is free to inexpensive, it's open source, and there are a wide variety of implementations and tools from which to choose. Factor in VSS's most debilitating feature, or lack thereof, that being remote access, and moving to the right Subversion package was a no-brainer.

So, what exactly is Subversion? From the Subversion project page:

Subversion is an open source version control system.

Simple as that, if only there weren't so many implementations. Fortunately, I'd done some prior research about a year ago when the idea of moving away from VSS started nagging at me, so I already had an idea which package I wanted to use. As if you couldn't tell from the title of this post, that implementation is Visual SVN. In this post, I'll take you through the installation of both the server and client pieces. Note that while the server piece is free, the client costs $49. You can get by with just Tortoise SVN (which is free) on the client-side, but I wanted a solution that integrates with Visual Studio.

Why Visual SVN?

First, why Visual SVN?

Regarded as one of the better SVN implementations
Integrates with Visual Studio 2008 (this is a must-have requirement)
Server is accessible remotely over http/https (this is a must-have requirement)
While not free, the cost of the client is minimal (the server is free)

What You Need to Get Started

There are three downloads you'll need:

1.) Visual SVN Server (cost: free)

2.) Visual SVN Client (cost: $49; you can download, install, and try it out during the trial period)

3.) Tortoise SVN (cost: free; Visual SVN recommends installing Tortoise SVN as it utilizes Tortoise for much of the file system/Windows explorer integration)

Get those now.

Installing the Visual SVN Server

Installing the server is pretty straightforward. I'm going to install on my home Windows 2003 server. You can probably install on your local machine, but I wouldn't recommend it. It's better to have your source control repository on a separate box for safety if nothing else. I do have the added bonus of being able to access my home server from any location (including SVN once it's installed), so I definitely want my repository there.

1.) First, locate the Visual SVN Server msi and double-click it. Click-through any pesky security warning dialogs until you see:

2.) Click 'Next'. You'll see:

3.) Accept the licensing terms and click 'Next'. Now we get to the meat of the install:

I was happy with all the defaults but for the Authentication selection. I chose to select "Use Windows Authentication" because my Windows 2003 server already acts as a domain controller, so I figure why not use my existing credentials?

A brief breakdown of the other items:

Install Location is what it is; change if you like.
Repository, again, is up to you. I left it alone.
Server Port is the port Visual SVN Server will listen on for incoming connections.
I chose to keep Use secure connection checked. I'm not that concerned with security (most of my personal/home projects are available via this blog, anyway), but I figure if it's there and it works, why not?
As above, I selected "Use Windows Authentication" as my Authentication scheme.

When you're happy with your selections, click 'Next".

5.) Almost done. Click 'Install'.

Wait while Visual SVN Server installs.

6.) Click 'Finish' to launch the Visual SVN Manager.

7.) With the Manager running, you'll see the following dialog. Visual SVN Server runs as a Windows service, so the Manager is really just the management interface, and doesn't need to run in order for you to access your source control repository.

8.) Let's add a user. Right-click on 'Repository', select 'All Tasks', 'Manage Security…':

There's a generic group already there. I removed it, and added my own domain login explicitly. By default, you'll have read/write access.

That's it for the server install. Let's install the client.

Installing the Visual SVN Client

Now, let's go through the steps to install the Visual SVN client on your development/client machine.

1.) Locate the Visual SVN client msi and double-click to install. Click-through security warnings until you see:

2.) Click 'Next' and you'll see the following dialog. Accept the License Agreement and click 'Next' again.

3.) Now you'll see this dialog:

I chose to not install the "Visual Studio 2003 Integration" piece as I do not develop in VS2003 anymore. I don't use VS2005 much either, but I figured I'd leave it just in case.

4.) Click 'Next' to get here:

Click 'Install' to install the Visual SVN client.

5.) One last dialog. If you haven't already, you can click 'Download Now' to download Tortoise SVN. Tortoise provides a lot of the file-level plumbing for Visual SVN, and is a recommended (and free, though donations are accepted), complementary install. Next, we'll go over installing Tortoise SVN.

Installing Tortoise SVN

1.) Locate the Tortoise SVN msi and double-click to install. Click-through the usual security warnings and you'll see:

2.) Click 'Next', accept the licensing terms on the next dialog, and click 'Next' again.

3.) On the following dialog I didn't see a need to install the 'GB' version of English, but I went with everything else.

4.) Click 'Next', then 'Install' to get the install rolling.

5.) You'll notice the 'Donate' button on the install dialog. If you feel so inclined…

6.) That's it. Pretty painless. Click 'Finish' to exit the final dialog.

7.) Oops. One more step. You may want to restart as it asks. I did.

Conclusion

To recap, my primary requirements for moving to any Subversion-based source control solution included:

Must integrate with Visual Studio
Must allow remote access via http/https

As far as #1, you can see below that Visual SVN gives you a new menu in Visual Studio from which you can browse your repositories and manage your source control functions.

For remote access, the Repository Browser allows me to access my server's repository:

Of course, remember to open port 8443 (or whatever port you specified during install) on your firewall.

You've now installed the necessary components of Visual SVN. But as far as using the product… that's a whole other post. However, here's some links to help get you going: