concept

The most visible difference between CVS and Subversion is that while CVS provides tags and branches, Subversion just uses copies as if you were using no source code management system at all:

mkdir branches
mkdir tags
mkdir src
cd src
tar -xzf myproject.tar.gz
cp -r myproject ../branches/EXPERIMENTAL
cp -r myproject ../tags/RELEASE_1_0_0

Contrary to a normal copy operation Subversions copies

• additionally retain the relation between the original and the copy
• use less space

Subversion comes with two different database backends: Berkley DB (BDB) and Filesystem Filesystem (FSFS). Berkley DB uses less space than FSFS but had some issues in that past which could corrupt the database because Subversion uses it in some unusual ways.

When using Subversion on a remote server it is recommended to use it along with an Apache so Apaches sophisticated user management can be used. There is a special Subversion module for Apache.