How to Install Subversion for Source Control

I was wondering if I should use software source control while I was working on a project at home.  Then I fumbled some keys while coding one day and accidentally broke my code.  What happened was that code that used to run quit running.  I did nothing intentionally to the code, I was just hopping between files and reading code, scrolling around.  What I discovered was that two lines were flipped around, they went out of sequence and would not work.  I discovered after investigating that the Netbeans IDE has functions, "Move Up" and "Move Down."  I stumbled into one of these by accident.  You can reach these through the menu bar with "Source > Move Up" (alt-shift-up arrow) and "Source > Move Down" (alt-shift-down arrow).  I must have pressed the hot keys by accident while in a hurry.  When I first discovered my file was broken I thought to myself, "if this was in source control I could just diff against the last version saved and I could see what the code was supposed to look like."  I was panicking and wondering if I had deleted a code block and what that code block was.  After this event I decided to install Subversion (SVN) for source control on my PC.

In the document following I describe how to install and use SVN on your PC for source control: Installing_Subversion.pdf. This document provides detailed directions, with screen shots, for installing Visual SVN as the SVN server and TortoiseSVN as the SVN client.

Software source control is important for protecting your code base.  Subversion and Git are currently the most popular systems for source control.

Robert