Someone asked for some experiences of using SVN with Eagle, so here are my experiences.
Some introdutory details.
First, for those that do not know, SVN is short for subversion and is an open source revision control system. Basically it allows you to work on your projects and keep snapshots (or 'revisions') of every file at every stage in the project. It also allows multiple people to work on the same project, amongst many other version control features.
It is an extremely useful tool for managing and recording changes to files, and for keeping branches of projects, rolling back to previous revisions etc etc etc. (this short description does not do it justice!)
SVN + Tortoise also allow you to work on one project from multiple locations.
SVN runs on a server (which can also be the client machine) and requires the Apache web server to be running too.
TortoiseSVN is a windows based client for SVN which integrates with Windows explorer (not internet explorer!)
A repository is where svn stores all the files and metadata.
Using SVN / TortoiseSVN
Before you can use TortoiseSVN you need access to an SVN repository - in turn, that requires that apache and SVN are installed on a server somewhere. This is not the place to describe how to set up Apache, SVN or tortoise - 2 minutes will google will get you all the details. Apache and SVN can run on windows, linux, unix and Mac OS X boxes.
I personally have my repository on a Mac OS X machine, and work on my project from a Mac client and windows based netbook (when on the move).
Once you have SVN installed and a repository created, you can import all your files to the repository, then you can CHECKOUT the files to any number of locations, work on the files, COMIT them back to the repository and UPDATE them to your working locations.
Every time you modify and comit a file (or collection of files) it/they is given a revision number and you can revert back to any revision at any time.
You can also create branches of a project (say you wish to take one product and develope it in two different directions) and you can merge branches back together again.
You don't need Tortoise at all if you are happy to use the svn client from command line.
Daily Routine Example:
So my daily routine consists of basically:
1. 'Update' the working folder to catch any changes I've made from other locations.
2. Work on my projects
3. 'Comit' my changes back to the repository
It sounds complicated but it really is simple, after you get it all set up.
There is currently no version control integration built into Eagle, but it's easy to do from explorer (using TortoiseSVN) or from the command line.
I couldn;t work without SVN and Tortoise now - it has saved my skin so many times!
One final point: SVN and Tortoise really come into their own when working on Text Based files - because you can use the 'diff' commands to see exactly what has changed line by line but obviously this isn't possible with Eagles proprietary binary formats.
