Subversion Installation Guide

The following guide provides instructions on how to get a command line Subversion client working on a Windows machine using Cygwin. You are welcome to use other Subversion clients (such as the excellent GUI-based TortoiseSVN client), but the lab exercises will be written using command line instructions.

Install Subversion

As with most popular tools that Cygwin supports, Subversion is available using Cygwin's setup program: setup.exe (available here). Once you have the setup program, execute it - which will bring up the following window:

Click "Next" to get:

The default setting here ("Install from Internet") is what we want, so continue by clicking "Next". Next up is the Root Install directory selection window:

The default is fine or you may select an alternate location if you prefer. Click "Next" to get to the Local Package Directory selection window:

Again the default is fine or you may select an alternate location if you prefer. Click "Next" and you'll be brought to the Internet Connection selection window. Unless you are using a proxy, the default of using a direct connection should be fine. Click "Next" and you'll be prompted to select a download site:

Select any download site from the list (*.edu sites tend to be quick, especially on campus). Click "Next" and the package list will be downloaded and displayed. In the search box type "subversion" and expand the "Devel" branch of the tree as shown below:

Mark the "subversion" package to be installed by clicking on the word "Skip" next to the subversion package. This should cause a version number to be displayed instead. The package selection window should now look like the following (the latest available version may differ from the screenshot):

Click "Next", and the setup program will determine if any other packages must be installed to resolve dependencies. Leave the checkbox enabled to ensure that subversion has access to all the libraries and tools it needs to function. This window will appear as follows (exact dependencies calculated may differ, but you can trust whatever list it determines):

Click "Next" to and the required files will be downloaded and installed, progress will be shown as follows:

When the installation completes, the following final window will be displayed:

Select whether or not you want the setup program to add icons in your start menu and/or desktop and click "Finish".

Test Installation

To verify that the installation worked as expected, start up a Cygwin bash session (by default Cygwin places an icon on your desktop that will do this). The first time you run Cygwin it will create your "home" directory and will copy "skeleton files" into that directory - don't worry this is normal. Once you receive a prompt, run subversion and request it to print it's help string with the following command:

svn --version

Note that the command for Subversion is an abbreviation. You should see something like this:

All that is important here is that no error message is printed. If it reports a version, you have a working subversion client!