Subversion is a stellar open source version control system initiated by CollabNet Inc. It is used to maintain source code.  There are many clients that support subversion, of which I want to introduce a simple eclipse plugin, Subclipse.  Subclipse (http://subversion.tigris.org/) is an Eclipse plugin that was released under the Eclipse Public License 1.0 open source license.

Subclipse provides an easy and clear technique to perform subversion repository operations. This article illustrates different features supported by subclipse.

Downloading and Installing Subclipse
As Subclipse is a subversion client,  the Subclipse version is tied up with the version of the subversion being used. Subclipse 1.6.5 is currently available for Eclipse 3.2+. Subclipse can be downloaded from http://subclipse.tigris.org/servlets/ProjectProcess?pageID=p4wYuA [Site accessed on 12/29/09]

Check Out an Application
All that you need to do to check out an application is to create a new svn project and provide the correct repository credentials. Subsequent repository browsing can be obtained by just a click. Sample repository browser is illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1:  Repository Exploring [reference:  http://subclipse.tigris.org/images/repos-ss.png]

Source Code Maintenance
General repository maintenance includes updating files, creating a tag from the workspace, creating a branch for concurrent development, history information to identify the commit logs, and synchronizing with the repository. These functionalities are a click-away distance for Subclipse. The team menu of the Subclipse is illustrated in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Team Menu [reference:  http://subclipse.tigris.org/images/menu-ss.png]

Merge
Subclipse 1.6.X has a powerful graphical merge client that was inherited from Subversion 1.5, sponsored by CollabNet. Subclipse supports a wide variety of merge inputs such as merging a range of revision, reintegrating to a branch, and a change-set based merge. CollabNet merge is illustrated in Figure 3.

Figure 3:   CollabNet Merge [reference: http://subclipse.tigris.org/images/merge/page1.png]

Commit
Once a file update is performed, a file can be reposted into a repository with a single click. The commit window is illustrated in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Commit window [reference: http://subclipse.tigris.org/images/commit-ss.png]

Conclusion
Subclipse is a good plugin with easy installation and easy implementations. Further information about Subclipse can be obtained from http://subclipse.tigris.org/

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